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Nonsense in New Hampshire
The Concord Monitor explains why it's petty and small-minded and--it goes without saying--conservative to be concerned about how Dartmouth's Alumni Association has reworked its election procedures in undemocratic ways:
Although the proposed electoral changes themselves are arcane, we are more than willing to acknowledge that people are all riled up about them. We can't help but wonder, though, whether this conservative angst isn't a bit myopic: While all this has been going on at Dartmouth, has anybody noticed that the Bush administration has assembled a vast centralized security state that systematically violates Americans' civil liberties, all the while asserting that executive power may not be checked by Congress, the courts or the press?Now there's something that ought to truly outrage those of conservative persuasion.
The article goes on to recite a litany of complaints about the Bush administration:
Warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of other types of records on a large scale is only part of the story. Bush asserts the right to hold hundreds of 'enemy combatants' indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without affording them recourse to court review; to disregard at his discretion legal prohibitions on torture of prisoners; to ignore laws passed by Congress or interpret them as he sees fit; and, contrary to the First Amendment as it has historically been interpreted, to prosecute the press for publishing government secrets.
The conclusion to this illogical tirade is appropriately snide:
although we can understand conservatives' desire to stamp out the last vestige of American liberalism by taking control of the universities, we can't help thinking that their time might be better spent reining in the gross overreaching of rightwing Washington. After all, someday a Democrat might get elected president again. As Norquist notes: 'These are all the powers you don't want Hillary Clinton to have.'"
ACTA has been covering the Dartmouth Alumni Association's attempts to impede the election of dark horse trustee candidates as well as its officers' arrogant decision to extend their own terms by deferring the date when they would either be re-elected or voted out of office. The implications of the Association's actions for Dartmouth governance are clear enough, and, if Dartmouth matters, it matters too to follow the activities of its associated alumni.
To suggest that autocratic reworkings of procedure--reworkings that interfere with genuinely democratic election practices at both the association and trustee level--are beneath notice because there are larger forces at work in the world is illogical. To suggest that only conservatives would be myopic enough to care about what is happening at Dartmouth is to suggest that liberals and centrists have no stake in democracy. To suggest that challenging the Association's actions is to assist the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy not only in ending liberalism but also in staging a coup over American higher education is to fail completely to grasp what liberalism is.
Let's hope the Concord Monitor does not speak for the people of Concord.
Posted by acta online at July 7, 2006 08:27 AM
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"Warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of other types of records on a large scale is only part of the story. Bush asserts the right to hold hundreds of 'enemy combatants' indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without affording them recourse to court review; to disregard at his discretion legal prohibitions on torture of prisoners; to ignore laws passed by Congress or interpret them as he sees fit; and, contrary to the First Amendment as it has historically been interpreted, to prosecute the press for publishing government secrets."
This is Daily Kos-level posting. If its alumni think and write like this, Dartmouth has a hell of a lot to answer for.
Posted by: Federal Dog at July 7, 2006 03:14 PM
Well, what can I say?
The only purpose served by the Concord Monitor having mentioned Dartmouth in the first place was to provide an excuse to rail against the President and his policies, using as much vintage '60's revolutionary rhetoric as could be squeezed into a limited space. Or so it seems to me.
Still, I think one has to answer it as if it is serious, even though it is transparently not, and it seems to me Ms. O'Connor accomplished that in one tight little paragraph:
"To suggest that autocratic reworkings of procedure--reworkings that interfere with genuinely democratic election practices at both the association and trustee level--are beneath notice because there are larger forces at work in the world is illogical. To suggest that only conservatives would be myopic enough to care about what is happening at Dartmouth is to suggest that liberals and centrists have no stake in democracy. To suggest that challenging the Association's actions is to assist the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy not only in ending liberalism but also in staging a coup over American higher education is to fail completely to grasp what liberalism is."
Ouch!
Posted by: Clawmute at July 7, 2006 05:55 PM