GENERATION RED, WHITE AND GRAY, If the children are the future, we're screwed.

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http://www.nypress.com/18/6/news & columns/AlexanderZaitchik.cfm

 

GENERATION RED, WHITE AND GRAY

If the children are the future, we're screwed.

 

By Alexander Zaitchik

 

Last week was a busy one on the creeping-fascism index. So busy, in

fact, that I finally accepted there is even such a thing as a

creeping-fascism index.

 

Over the past few years, I've held fast to a belief that America is

too sprawling, too diverse and too fundamentally committed to its

Constitution to ever change its flag to red, white and black. Now I'm

not so sure. It wasn't a delayed reaction to the Patriot Act,

Guantanamo, Iraq or the confirmation of torture hombre Alberto

Gonzalez that did it, but a modest blip on the post-9/11 radar: a poll

finding that a third of high school students think the First Amendment

" goes too far. "

 

At least that's what they think of the First Amendment once it's

explained to them. After interviewing 100,000 teens in the largest

study of its kind, the John S. and James C. Knight Foundation reports

fast shrinking respect for bedrock constitutional freedoms of speech,

press and assembly. Among the findings widely commented on last

week—but not widely enough—only 51 percent said newspapers should be

allowed to publish content without state approval. Three-quarters

actually thought flag burning was illegal—and didn't care—while almost

one-fifth said Americans should not be allowed to express unpopular views.

 

News of the poll triggered a few easy comparisons to the fear-driven

conformity of the early Cold War. But that analogy is wishful

thinking. Even at its worst, the paranoid patriotism of the 1950s

existed uneasily alongside a respect for and knowledge of American

history and the Constitution. Even as critics were stripped of their

passports and driven out of the academy and Hollywood, and even as the

CIA subverted popularly elected governments abroad, in U.S. high

schools one of the most frequently assigned books was Howard Fast's

Citizen Tom Paine. However airbrushed that era's celebratory view of

America's past, kids still had a sense of that past as something to

honor, if only in theory. However dramatically the country deviated

from its stated ideals, the baseline culture still instilled a

reverence for the founding fathers and the Bill of Rights. Every

teenager at least knew what those things were.

 

What we have now is the worst elements of the 1950s without the

literacy and understanding of the American creed that made possible

the corrective revolts of the 1960s. Last week's Knight poll is an

ominous sign of more than just another paranoid burst of American

politics, one that will flame out or be eclipsed by some inevitable

Aquarian renewal. It is a glimpse into the brain of the first

videogame generation to come of age during the war on terror.

Post-9/11 political culture plus ADD equals those poll results. There

is no good reason to expect the trend to reverse on its own.

 

The authoritarian-minded teens given voice by the Knight study aren't

alone in thinking free speech un-American. Everyone gets their

politics from somewhere, and the brouhaha surrounding last Thursday's

forced cancellation of a lecture by Ward Churchill at Hamilton College

reminds us where they're getting it.

 

For comparing employees in the World Trade Center to Nazi

technocrats— " little Eichmmans " he called them—Churchill received

multiple death threats and is now fighting to retain his tenured

position at the University of Colorado. Churchill's argument, made in

his essay, " On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the

Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality, " is the same

made by any number of radical critics of U.S. foreign policy in the

wake of 9/11. Since WTC worker bees operated the financial machinery

of American power, and since this power, to pick one frequently cited

example, is responsible for sanctions resulting in the deaths of

hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, then these workers were

understandable if not legitimate targets of revenge, argues Churchill.

Given all the death and destruction the U.S. has rained down around

the globe, some sort of payback was inevitable, even justified.

 

This is a harsh and debatable case to make, but it is Churchill's

right to make it. And if the idea that civilians should be punished

for their governments resonated with anyone, it should have been Bill

O'Reilly, who issued the prime-time fatwa against Churchill that

started the ball rolling. Recall O'Reilly on Afghanistan:

 

" The U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble… If [they]

don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period. "

 

On Iraq:

 

" [T]he population [must be] made to endure yet another round of

intense pain.... Maybe then the people there will finally overthrow

Saddam. "

 

On Libya:

 

" [W]e mine the harbor in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out…

Let them eat sand. "

 

If O'Reilly froths like this on national television, you'd think he

wouldn't mind a little-known University of Colorado professor making a

similar case to a handful of middle-class leftish undergrads.

(Churchill's scheduled lecture, entitled " Limits of Dissent? " was

actually on the subject of Native American rights.) But O'Reilly drew

the free-speech line at turning his favorite line of argument back

against America. In this case, the First Amendment " goes too far. "

 

Further up the food chain, Roger Kimball of the New Criterion pounced

on the Churchill controversy to expound on the need to put curbs on

campus dissent.

 

The case of Ward Churchill, wrote Kimball, " raises troubling questions

about the way 'free speech' is trotted out as an excuse for political

irresponsibility at colleges and universities today… [T]he truth is

that freedom of speech, like all human freedoms, thrives only when it

is limited… [A]cademic freedom is 'the freedom to seek and transmit

the truth.' It does not…extend to the conduct of political propaganda

in teaching.' "

 

Who should determine " truth " versus " political propaganda " Kimball

does not say. After all, this was the conundrum that led the founders

to amend the Constitution to include the bit about absolute freedom of

speech in the first place. But Kimball—like his neocon colleague

Gertrude Himmelfarb, who began a watch-list of un-American professors

on Sept. 12—strongly implies that truth is to be defined by people

like him. As for those who spread ideas that might cause young

Americans to question the benevolence of U.S. power—these people are

dangerous propagandists. They must be silenced.

 

Or at least fired. In Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News has joined

Gov. Bill Owens in calling for Churchill's tenured scalp. The state

senate and house have both censured the professor, and have introduced

yet another brave resolution expressing sympathy for the 9/11 victims.

The university regents are feeling heat from all directions. Only the

UC-Boulder faculty is supporting their colleague, in between

obligatory statements condemning his words.

 

If Churchill does get the axe, it will be a bright flashback to the

last time " it happened here. " In Colorado, it would reprise the saga

of a young UC philosophy professor named Morris Judd, recounted last

week in the Denver Post. While being interrogated by detectives in

1951, Judd refused to respond to questions about his political views

and those of his colleagues. A report was then issued claiming an

anonymous student said Judd had criticized the U.S. for its

" imperialistic war in Korea. " Judd and 10 other staff members were

fired, after which the professor took a job as the office manager at a

Greeley junkyard.

 

In 2002, UC faculty awarded Judd a medal of honor.

 

Volume 18, Issue 6

 

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