Showing posts with label Neville Chamberlain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neville Chamberlain. Show all posts

Friday, November 13, 2015

When the mouse is away, the cats will play or (to mix my metaphors) the nannies have put the children in charge of the nursery at American colleges and universities

"When the mouse is away, the cats might play," Churchill remarked about one of his political colleagues. I believe he was speaking of Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who sealed the Munich Pact with Hitler. (And we know how that turned out.)

I thought of Churchill's line as I contemplated recent events at the University of Missouri, a fine public university with one of the best journalism programs in the United States. As everyone listening to the news now knows, Timothy Wolfe, Mizzou's president, stepped down after being accused of inadequate sensitivity to racism on the university campus.

This incident follows similar outbreaks of hysteria on other university campuses, including distinguished institutions like Yale and Dartmouth.

Apparently, there is a general perception among college students, the elite media, and even the Obama administration that America's college campuses are bastions of sexism and racism.  It is said that one in five college women are victims of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault and that minority students are repeatedly victimized by racist slurs.

Personally, I don't believe it. America's colleges and universities have many sins to answer for, but racism and sexism are not among them. No senior university administrator would last a moment in the politically correct atmosphere of academia if he or she said or did anything that could even remotely be considered as being insensitive on matters of race or gender.

In fact, the nation's college communities are in a frenzied debate about bathroom etiquette. Back in the Neanderthal age (20 years ago), benighted Americans thought that men should go to the men's bathrooms and women should use the women's bathrooms.  But now that simple rule has been undermined by people who are oh so much more sensitive than you or me.

And Christian student groups, once seen as inoffensive and perhaps even moral paragons, are now being kicked off campus by such prestigious institutions as Berkeley and Bowdoin. Mustn't allow Christians, with their benighted views on family life, to be recognized as a student group. They might pollute the rarefied atmosphere of our enlightened universities.

So if universities have turned their attention to toilet rules and to booting Christians off their campuses, I can't imagine that college administrators are insensitive to the very important issues of gender and race.

My guess is that President Wolfe did not resign out of shame about his insensitivity to racism.  He just said to hell with it.

I will make one final point about the witch-trial atmosphere of American colleges and universities, and it is this: Apparently no one at our higher education institutions has a remote notion of what free speech and academic freedom mean.

Worse than that, we've allowed students to tell professors and administrators what these concepts mean. If indeed college students know more than their teachers about academic freedom and our precious right to freedom of speech than their instructors and deans, why in the hell are students paying $40 grand a year to get a college education?

The University of Missouri imbroglio is not a new phenomenon. Tom Wolf's essay "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" was written more than 40 years ago, and it describes exactly the kind of behavior that we see at the University of Missouri.  Our college leaders either don't understand the principles of civil discourse and academic freedom or they are so cowardly that they will submit to being lectured on racial civility by their uncouth and ignorant students.  Or perhaps both.

Personally, if I were mom or pop, I would consider telling my kids to skip college altogether. Certainly, no one should borrow money simply to buy a seat in a guerrilla theater. And any university alum who makes a monetary donation to an American college or university is a fool.


Neville Chamberlain: Sensitive to Hitler's point of view

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Peace for our time or a historic mistake? The Ivy Leaguers make a deal with Iran and your children will pay the price

World War II was unnecessary, Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm, the first volume of his history of the Second World War. Had the British and Americans conducted their affairs "with the ordinary consistency and common sense usual in decent households," Church observed, they could have maintained their security without bloodshed.
Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain & Hitler
September 23, 1938
Those of us who read history know that Neville Chamberlain made a groveling peace pact with Hitler in 1938, and less than a year later, England and Germany were at war.  As Churchill put the matter, "You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war."

Today, the United States and its passive allies are on the verge of a deal with Iran whereby the United States and the European Union lift their sanctions against Iran and Iran promises not to build a nuclear bomb.

Does anyone believe Iran will cease its efforts to become a nuclear power? I certainly don't.  And Israel, whose life depends upon this issue, doesn't believe it either.  The deal with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated emphatically, is a "historic mistake."

But, like Neville Chamberlain, who believed his deal with Hitler would bring "peace for our time," President Obama believes he has made the Middle East a safer place. Or perhaps he merely believes a deal with Iran will look good on his vita.

America's national affairs are in such disarray that it is embarrassing to contemplate them. Today, the United States begs a mob of Afghan elders to allow us to pour American blood and treasure into a country that has no interest whatsoever in democratic values or human rights.

On the home front, the President has lied repeatedly about the essential features of Obamacare, but he holds average Americans in such contempt that he doesn't bother with a proper apology.  As Churchill said of British politician Stanley Baldwin, "He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened."

As I have said more than once, our country is being run by people who were schooled in the nation's elite colleges and professional schools--institutions which teach nothing more than arrogance, an unseemly obsession with power and recognition, and a studied cynicism toward traditional American values.

How will all this end? Regarding Iran, there are just two possibilities.  Either Iran will become a nuclear power and thereby make the Middle East even more unstable or Israel will launch military strikes in an effort to destroy Iran's nuclear capability.

If Israel acts militarily, you can kiss your 401(k) goodbye along with your draft-age children and grandchildren.

But don't worry about Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.  However things turn out, there's a book deal for Obama after he steps down from the presidency.  And John Kerry's wealth is well invested.  He will do just fine financially no matter what happens to you and me.

References

Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948.

Jodi Rudoren. Israelis See Ticking Clock, and Alternative Approaches, on Iran and Palestinians. New York Times, November 26, 2013, p. A12.