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Authors: Mike S. Adams

Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand (13 page)

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In other words, CBS is unfair, imbalanced, and biased. That’s why I rarely watch them any more.
My experience with Fox News has been much different. I was first involved in a nationally publicized free speech controversy in 2001. That controversy revolved around an accusation of libel that a socialist student leveled against me. After she tried to demand that the university read some of my private emails, I was invited to appear on Fox’s
Hannity and Colmes
. They invited my accuser, too, but she declined to appear on the show.
Then, in 2003, I wrote a controversial satire on affirmative action. I was invited to appear on
The O’Reilly Factor
to discuss my position. Bill invited someone on the other side of the issue to appear on the show as well. That person declined, and I made my appearance on the show without opposition.
In 2005, I got into a bit of a tiff with an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying professor. We were invited to appear together on
Fox News
Live with Martha MacCallum. I showed up, but the anti-Semite did not.
In 2007, I linked a Kent State University history professor to a violent Islamic Jihadist website. I specifically accused him of treason for aiding and actively encouraging the killing of American troops (and for disseminating bomb-making instructions on the Internet). We were both invited to appear on
Fox News Live
with Megyn Kelly. I showed up, but the professor did not.
You are no doubt seeing a pattern here. Fox News may be biased, but the apparent imbalance is often created by leftists who refuse to debate the issues on Fox. In fact, one Marxist actually mocked Fox publicly about their claim to be “fair and balanced”—after declining to debate me on Fox News. To me, that sounds like killing both your parents and then asking the judge to show you mercy because you’re an orphan.
As for the decision to ban Fox as a resource for that environment science class assignment because of its “bias,” only this needs to be said: the professor sees the speck that is in his brother’s eye yet is blind to the log in his own.
But what is to be said about the rest of the Fox News-haters, Zach? Is it accurate to say that professors with leftist politics hate Fox News
despite
its desire to promote debate on controversial issues? Or is it more accurate to say that these professors hate Fox News
because of
its desire to promote debate on controversial issues?
Regardless of how you answer that question, I hope we can agree on one thing: most people who teach at secular universities have no business lecturing others on the issue of ideological diversity.
LETTER 23
 
Rester in Peace
 
Zach
,
My seventh-great-grandfather was a man named Frederick Rester. I learned about him through my mother’s tireless efforts to trace our family history as far back as possible. She managed to trace those roots back to the 1500s. She even traveled to a small Lutheran church our ancestors attended in Germany in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.
In the nearly forty years during which my mother researched our family, there was nothing that interested me more than Frederick Rester’s story. The reason for that was simple: he was a veteran of the American Revolution fighting under the leadership of General George Washington.
Frederick Rester went to battle for this young nation at the age of thirteen. He was shot and received an honorable discharge from the military at the age of fifteen. I have a copy of his official discharge. It is among my most cherished possessions.
But until a couple of years ago, when I began to read biographies of all our American presidents, I did not gain a full appreciation for the sacrifice of our revolutionary soldiers. I started with George Washington, of course, and was shocked to learn of the conditions our troops faced during the American Revolution.
Reading about soldiers who crossed the Delaware River mid-winter without any shoes made me wonder whether Frederick Rester was among those barefooted soldiers. It also made me think about the pathetic condition of today’s men—a generation so indifferent to principle and so intolerant of discomfort. I began to notice the contrast when I left school and became a college professor.
When I accepted a job as a university professor back in 1993, I was so excited because I have always considered the American university to be the quintessential marketplace of ideas. I looked forward to contributing to that robust marketplace by addressing many of the great controversies and issues of the day. You can probably imagine my disappointment when I first discovered that our university employed a patently unconstitutional speech code.
It was just my first semester, the fall of 1993, when I sat down and read our university speech code, which was embedded within our university’s faculty handbook. The code said there was a ban on the use of offensive speech—anything which might make someone feel uncomfortable along the lines of race, gender, and a whole laundry list of other demographic variables.
As I sat in the department’s main office and read our speech code, I was so taken aback that I had to read it again out loud. After I read it out loud, I looked up and said, “Every idea is potentially offensive to someone. Every idea has the potential to make someone feel uncomfortable. This speech code is clearly unconstitutional.”
A colleague who happened to be present responded, “But the speech code doesn’t apply to all kinds of speech. It only applies to certain types of speech.” No truer words were ever spoken.
After I heard my colleague’s frank admission, I knew that some day I was going to have to go to war against that speech code and against university speech codes in general. I was a liberal and an atheist at the time, but I knew I had a legacy to defend. I could not simply hand over the rights Frederick Rester fought so hard to defend. Apathy did not seem rational at the time. And I’m still surprised that this idea of a ban on offensive speech has been adopted by so many otherwise rational people.
From our discussions of abortion and criminology, you’ve already seen that leftists have trouble with arguments, research, and facts that don’t conform to their view of the world. Speech codes are one way for them to force people with dissenting views to shut up. Personal attacks are another. If you’re going to be challenging the progressives’ assumptions in public, you’re going to have to be ready to deal with those attacks.
I will write more on that in my next letter to you, which will also take up some of the differences between liberals and conservatives on economic issues. Meanwhile, study hard and enjoy this beautiful spring weather.
LETTER 24
 
The F-Bomb
 
Zach
,
There is a growing divide in America between two groups—those who believe the government can solve all of their problems and those who desperately want to see the government get out of their way so they may live freely and solve their own problems through their own abilities. Unfortunately, those in the former group have a tendency to attack their political opponents with words they do not even understand. America’s continuing financial problems have really brought this tendency to the forefront of American political discourse.
Last summer, Standard & Poor’s decided to downgrade America’s credit rating from AAA to AA, marking the first time America had lost its AAA rating since the Great Depression. Within days, liberal advocates of deficit spending began to refer to this downgrade as the “Tea Party downgrade.” In other words, progressives began to say that the downgrade that resulted from deficit spending was actually the fault of a political movement that opposes deficit spending. This is a lot like saying that feminists can be blamed for the problem of rape or that the NAACP is responsible for the problem of lynching.
To make matters worse, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, had already referred to the Tea Party as a bunch of “tyrants.” That is certainly odd because the Tea Party is comprised of individuals who would like to end government tyranny by drastically reducing the size of government. The illogic of her remarks reminds me of a comment characterizing me as a “fascist” for supporting Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination.
That was the third time I had been called a fascist by someone characterizing himself or herself as a progressive. See if you can identify the common thread among the three accusations:
1. In 2000, a colleague hurled the accusation against me after he saw an NRA sticker on my office door.
2. In 2004, another professor hurled the accusation against me—she actually used the term “fascist pig”—because I missed a party at her house in order to attend a “Friends of the NRA” dinner. In fact, she was so angry that she said we were all “fascist pigs.”
3. Finally, in 2011 I was dubbed a fascist by someone who thought I was a part of the Tea Party movement. Actually, I am not—although I do respect what they are trying to do.
The common thread here is pretty obvious. The accusation of fascism is a response to my support of limited government and increased private ownership—most notably, my support of the private ownership of firearms. This would seem to be at odds with the true definition of “fascism,” which follows (from the
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
):
A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
 
That’s odd, isn’t it? Those who favor collectivism above individualism and who approve of centralized government— characterized by
increased
economic regimentation—are using the term “fascist” to describe the opponents of their positions—which progressives, in fact, share with actual fascists. This is not to suggest that all progressives are just modern-day fascists. But it does suggest two other things that are worth noting in
bold letters.
(Sorry, Zach, I don’t like to use ALL CAPS in emails but I do occasionally use
bold letters.)
1.
Many members of the progressive movement do not seem to understand the meaning of the word “fascist:”
2.
Fascists probably have much more in common with progressives than they do with members of the NRA or the Tea Party.
But, of course, progressives have trouble understanding the truth of the second
bolded
statement because of the undeniable truth of the first statement. That is why I wish some of these progressives had met my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Barbara O’Gara.
When I was just eleven years old, I got into an argument with a classmate. For the life of me, I cannot remember what we were arguing about at the time. But I do know that I was losing the argument because I also lost my temper. And then I blurted out the accusation that my classmate was a “fascist.” Mrs. O’Gara stopped what she was doing and immediately focused the attention of the class on yours truly. The first question she asked was simply devastating: “Mike, what exactly is fascism—in other words, what does one have to believe to be a fascist?”
I was utterly terrified. Because I did not know the meaning of the word “fascism” or the word “fascist,” I simply sat there and shook my head. I was then given a homework assignment: go home and look up the meaning of the word “fascism” and return with a brief one-paragraph, typewritten explanation of the word—followed by a brief one-paragraph explanation of why it is generally a bad idea to use words you don’t understand.
There is a lesson to be learned from this. When we are involved in heated arguments we do not usually have the authority to assign homework to our opponents. But we do have the opportunity to ask them these two questions, loosely based on Mrs. O’Gara’s strategy for dealing with me:
1. What exactly does “fascist” (or any other derogatory term) mean?
2. What does “fascism” (or any other derogatory term) have to do with the situation at hand?
When we ask these questions, it is very unlikely that we will get a response to the first question. In other words, we will usually end up supplying the definition of the derogatory term to the person who interjected it into the conversation in the first place. Whenever we ask the second question, we have an opportunity to completely turn the tables on our opponents.
LETTER 25
 
Of Mice and Mensa
 
Dear Zach
,
Before we go any further, I want to remind you of the reason why I began writing you this series of letters. When I first taught you as a freshman at UNC-Wilmington, I had very high hopes for you and for your future intellectual development. But the second time I taught you—in the spring of your sophomore year—I noticed that you had embraced some of the ideological assumptions and beliefs of some of your progressive professors. Because I think that their ideology is both wrong and dangerous, I wanted to continue the conversation. You’ve shown yourself to be remarkably willing to consider another point of view, to face facts and logical arguments that didn’t mesh with the beliefs you had adopted, and to rethink some of the positions that you had taken. Now I want you to think about why you adopted those progressive positions in the first place.
BOOK: Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand
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