Sunday’s Post-Disgrace column by Joe Holleman was jaw-dropping. I had to go back, rub my eyes, and re-read the part where he says “I would label myself — ‘slightly to the right of center'”
After condescending on the simple desire to see Barack Obama’s real birth certificate with all the haughtiness of an east coast liberal, Holleman decided to wade into the controversy between tea party members (note the lower-case) and Don Giljum and Judy Ancel’s promotion, advocacy, and recruitment into the Communist Party.
Holleman says, “I think if we’re going to waste a few thousand dollars, we should do it by employing a few communists at our universities.
Let’s face it, where else are they going to go?
Communism has been kicked out of every Eastern European country. It would be dead in Cuba if the economy wasn’t bolstered by the thriving black market for 1950s car parts.”
So if college campuses don’t provide a safe haven for communists, then they’ll start circulating in the real world. Personally, I don’t need all that earnest goofiness.”
Later, Mr. Holleman points out that he was “irked” that some members of the tea party, who’s blog entries are syndicated on the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition web site, labeled advocates of communism as “degenerates” and “wastes of human flesh”.
‘Some say’ that “degenerates” and “wastes of human flesh” were too kind of words to describe the advocates of communism.
A quick aside to remind Mr Holleman of the facts:
Stéphane Courtois argues that Communism and National Socialism are slightly different totalitarian systems, and that communism is responsible for the murder of around 100 million people in the 20th century. He also argues that the National Socialists [Hitler] adopted their repressive methods from Soviet methods.
Stéphane Courtois (born November 25, 1947) is a French historian, an internationally known expert on communist studies, particularly the history of communism and communist genocides, and author of several books. The Black Book of Communism, a book edited by Courtois, has been translated into numerous languages, sold millions of copies and is considered a standard work on communist genocides.
So, Mr. Holleman wants keep the hiring window open at the universities for the ideology that murdered 100,000,000 people in the 20th Century (and from which National Socialists took their cues)? Better they be there at the colleges teaching and recruiting our impressionable children than “circulating in the real world”?
Okay then, by Joe’s logic, what other ideologies and political theories should we welcome on campus in the name of academic freedom? Seems that anyone who murdered 100 million or less in a century works for Joe. At what point does the level of murder during the implementation of a political ideology become too much for Mr. Holleman (and not just “earnest goofiness”)?
How about supporters of fascism? Hitler only killed 6 Million Jews – way less than communism dude. Sign ’em up; right Joe?
How about the KKK? Should the grand wizard of the local radical racists be hired as an adjunct professor at UMSL or UMKC? What great testimony to academic freedom, right?!?! They killed way less than 1,000,000 people and probably are even bourgeoisie.
Al Qaeda has killed barely 10,000? Sign up the radical Imams?
But, we certainly don’t the ROTC or, Satan forbid, the Christian Conservatives!
Say it isn’t so Joe… …that you’d try to minimize the devastation and brutality that has been prosecuted in the name of communism and suggest that we allow its advocates a platform to indoctrinate our youth.
I think not!
Sadly, my comparison of communism, fascism, the KKK, and radical Islam will be dismissed as hysterical hyperbole, but ignoring the deaths of hundreds of millions of human beings in the name of an ideology and minimizing the hiring of their supporters at America’s universities?!?! Well comrade, that’s just “steadfast knuckleheadedness”!
