OUTRAGEOUS

Posted at 9:38 a.m. ET

This story will outrage you.  It focuses on what our kids are being taught in institutions of "higher education."  Dennis Prager, the conservative talk-show host, was on a flight to Denver and encountered a student.  Read on:

She: Who did you vote for?

Me: McCain

She: Why?

Me: Smaller government and the war on terror.

She: Terror is the new communism.

Me: Communism killed about a hundred million people. And who do you think attacked and killed 3,000 of us on Sept. 11?

She: The government.

Yup.  A college student.  Prager found out that she attended the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Surprised?

Truth is she had to be a student at a major university. She would never have come up with “Terror is the new Communism” on her own. It is a moral obscenity that one has to learn.

Of course, there is an irony to this statement. Meant in the opposite way she meant it, I could largely assent to the proposition that terror is the new communism. Communism was an enslaving and murderous threat in its time and the Jihadism is such a threat in our lifetime.

But that is not how this young woman meant the statement. As she has learned history and the contemporary world, communism was a bogeyman in its time and terror is a bogeyman in our time.

The way it's often stated by some "educators," communism is just another lifestyle choice, or another "narrative."

Prager tried to explain to this young woman what communism is, and what it had done.  It had no effect.

In her belief that neither communism nor terror were/are real threats, I suspect this young woman represents many college students. If one wants to understand what left-wing dominance in university social sciences departments produces, one merely had to meet this young woman.

At most universities, communism is a non-evil, indeed, largely a non-issue. The most enslaving and murderous movement in history is almost never taught as such. When communism is mentioned at all, it is usually solely in order to show how vile anti-communists were. Thus, as little as students may know about McCarthyism, most students far more readily identify it with evil than they do communism. Indeed, more could probably identify Joseph McCarthy than Joseph Stalin.

That is very well stated, and completely accurate.  On some college campuses, even disagreeing with a Marxist gets you labeled as a McCarthyite. 

And that, quite frankly, breaks my heart. I am currently reading “Mao: The Secret Life,” almost universally regarded, even in the mainstream media, as the most important book on Mao ever written. According to the authors, in 1930-31 alone, Mao and his gang developed 120 types of torture for use on innocent people he wanted to force into phony confessions so as to rule by terror...

...These poor souls have no memorial. Least of all at an American university.

We think we won the Cold War.  We did...except in our own universities and in parts of the press. 

A commentator several years ago remarked that American parents spend years trying to guide their kids so they'll get into select colleges.  And then those same parents never ask one question about what is being taught to their children.

I'm hoping that the economic pressure of these times will force the nation to take a cold look at our colleges and universities, and start asking some very tough questions before doling out federal billions in "aid to education."  Too often it's not education that's being aided, but propaganda. 

We'll return to this theme often.

January 27, 2009.