ACTA's Must-Reads

Renehan and this blog both display a rather narrow idea of civic service. Non-violent protests *are* services to the nation. Anti-racist organizations, environmental groups, literacy tutors, and other student-run campus organizations all fulfill their civic duties. But for ACTA, I guess all those "aggrieved" Civil Rights activists of the 60s were just a bunch of duty-shirking loafers with no sense of civic responsibility.

Renehan's logic on the Iraq war is similarly simplistic. I find it ridiculous that we are asked to set aside our ethical or political opposition to a war or else find ourselves accused of not rendering proper civic service to our nation.

Renehan then asks administrators and professors to lead by example. Great! A bunch of recent Ph.D. graduates in their 30s will fill the military. I feel safer already. Of course, Renehan never makes clear why college professors or administrators should by example more than, say, CEOs of major corporations or market analysts or stock brokers. (Renehan also never makes it clear why a President and Vice-President of a nation could be allowed to have avoided military service -- isn't the Commander in Chief the one who's *really* supposed to lead by example?)

Ironically, this blog argues that "access isn't everything," as if the military cannot compete in the ACTA-beloved "free market of ideas." Last I checked, it was the military which regularly airs television commercials and ads in major print media. But I guess that English teacher who can barely convince her students to read the Woolf novel on the syllabus can magically convince her students to avoid military service. (It's all that rhetoric training us English types get that lets us sell our lefty brand better than the Army -- cuz, you know, the Army only has ad executives and loads of money behind it.) Perhaps ACTA will ask for a military affirmative action: a certain number of pro-military administators -- or, better yet, just force students randomly to serve. I think they used to have a program like that. It was called the Draft.

" .. I find it ridiculous that we are asked to set aside our ethical or political opposition to a war .."

Madam, with all due respect, the consumers are tired for paying for teaching -- then getting preaching.

Many are borrowing money to be in classrooms. They are restless, already, and large debt just makes them more so.

All they want you and your kind to do, is to do your job, and save the Michael Moore commercials for after work.

If you cannot -- please resign and save everyone a lot of annoying grief. At least 20 others will apply for your position. Within weeks, you will be, but a fleeting memory. Life will go on. Thank you.

A.D., your logic is even more loopy than Renehan's. I agree, in part: professors are paid to teach. Any work they do with campus groups is unpaid, so it shouldn't matter if this work is, say, pro-war or anti-war. Such work is disconnected from the work of scholarship and the classroom. Contra Renehan, I assert that professors have no special reponsibility to put aside ethical objections to the war in Iraq and leads students by example into joining the military.

And anyway, for professors to get students to join the military would constitute political indoctrination. And ACTA opposes professorial indoctrination of students.

"Non-violent protests *are* services to the nation. Anti-racist organizations, environmental groups, literacy tutors, and other student-run campus organizations all fulfill their civic duties."

To equate all of the aforementioned activity as 'services to the nation' equivalent to military service is obtuse. Even if noble and courageous, partcipation in the actions described in the quote is entirely voluntary - driven primarily by an individual's own moral code. More relevant, however, they are activities that can be joined or abandoned at the convenience of the individual. While joining the military may be a voluntary endeavor, the resulting committment of service is not. Members of the military are often asked to set-aside their own individual beliefs to execute orders derived from the decisions of elected officials - elected officials that represent the people of this nation.

Finally, I wholeheartedly agree that having professors trying to get students to join the military crosses the line into political indoctrination. It would be like having professors describe their strident opposition to the Iraq war in an English class and encouraging non-violent protest against the same. Of course, ACTA opposes professorial indoctrination of students.

John, sacrificing oneself because someone else told you to do so, despite one's own moral objections to the deadly situation, is not some inherently noble action. German soldiers who at some level knew better but still killed in the Holocaust because they were ordered to kill by their superiors are, obviously, not models of virtue.

"John, sacrificing oneself because someone else told you to do so, despite one's own moral objections to the deadly situation, is not some inherently noble action."

An obvious and pathetic red herring. We have had a volunteer military for decades now, and you obviously have no basis in facts, logic, or personal experience in the military on which to evaluate the motives of those who enlist. For these reasons, intelligence and decency demand circumspection, not ad hominem slurs against people to whom you owe your personal safety and life.

Federal Dog, my comments have had nothing to say about the morality of US soldiers. If you actually read my comments, you will see that.

My only point was this: Renehan argues that people should put aside their ethics and join the army. Why? Because Rehehan can morally separate the invasion of Iraq from the occupation of Iraq. So even if you think the invasion was unethical, you have to support the US now that we're stuck there. I think that's wrong. It is wrong to do something you think is ethically wrong just because "your nation" asks you to do so.

You state the obvious -- of course the US has a volunteer military. That's as it should be.

Which makes nonsense of Renehan's notion that all Americans have a responsibility to help sort out the aftermath of Bush's moronic invasion of Iraq. As if the crippling burden of the debt Bush has foisted onto our children and grandchildren because of this war isn't enough. As if non-military forms of service do not exist.

[Meanwhile, the military has fired another desparately needed Arabic translator because he was found out to be gay. And Renehan expects Americans to trust their lives to a President and a government that would be make critical national security decisions based on who someone likes to go to bed with?]

WHERE IS THY STING?

" .. Meanwhile, the military has fired another desparately needed Arabic translator because he was found out to be gay .."

Madam, it was your Mr. Clinton who came up with "don't ask, don't tell." His political instincts told him it was compromise or defeat, and he won.

Madam, if the U.S. is such a lousy country -- why are you still here? Why haven't gone somewhere else? Is it because there is no other country that would have you and your anti-nationalist attitude?

My students are nice, average working-class kids, many the first in their working-class families to go to college. Their working-class parents are leveraged to the hilt, paying for college. They look like they are concerned their investment may not pay off.

Then someone like you shows up, with your "the U.S. isn't good enough" attitude. And I have re-visit the pro's and con's of going to college with my students and their parents.

Frankly, I think they may be right. With U.S. soft-side academia infested with "America Is Always Wrong" types like you, Ward Churchill, Timothy Shortell, Billy Ayers, Grover Furr, Bernadine Dohrn, et al., college can be a crap-shoot (pun intended).

Yes, I know. You're always right, and everybody else is always wrong. This reminds me of what the late Rodney Dangerfield once said about matters like this: "oh Death, where is thy sting?"

AD -- I've lived in other countries, and I think America is a stunning nation. But all the best Americans have had an "America isn't good enough" attitude. The fulfillment of democratic ideals is, as John Dewey argued, never complete -- and that's why democracy is the greatest form of government. As long as one citizen is kept from fulfilling his or her fullest civic potential for any but the most personal reasons, a democracy is incomplete. One country is always better than America is -- and that is the country America could be.

While I generally vote Democrat, I don't agree with many of Clinton's policies. "Don't ask, don't tell" is part of a wider American hatred of homosexuals, plain and simple.

You can impugn my patriotism all you like. I adhere to the American Creed.

" .. I adhere to the American Creed."

Great. Please do it from one of your vacation spots in France, North Korea, Cuba, or Syria.

We are already dealing with the messes that your brilliant kind have left behind -- low test scores, broken homes, poor work ethic, high social costs.

Your kind have already contributed enough to the decline of the U.S. -- you can move on, now. Make a mess of some other country, please -- if they don't imprison you, first. I'm sure the Syrians have a very special place for people like you.