The University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 32, No. 22, Ed. 1 Wednesday, April 30, 2003 Page: 12 of 15
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April 30, 2003 ~he University News
Commentary
lynn's speech ust as conservative as Jensen s is liberal
by Fritz Vonhamme
Guest Columnist
In Daniel Flynn's book, Why
the Left Hates America:
Exposing the Lies That Have
Obscured Our Nation's
Greatness, he uses the tale of the
Trojan horse to describe how
America is being ripped to
shreds from within. He argues
that in the aftermath of the Sept.
11 attacks a limited number of
insensitive liberals blamed the
hijackings on America's faults.
He even quoted Dr. Robert
Jensen, the would-be speaker
who has recently sparked a
major controversy at UD.
Shortly after 9/11, Jensen
apparently compared the
terrorist hijackings to, say,
dropping a nuclear warhead on
a non-military city like
Nagasaki or our treatment of
the Second Indochinese War
and the massive civilian
casualties there. And with such
accusations, by Flynn's
reckoning, Jensen is not a good
American.
What is the difference
between the Sept. 11 hijackings
and, say, dropping an A-bomb
on someone after all? Seven
thousand lives—that's what.
Imagine living in Japan during
the end of the Second World
War and finding out that your
sister in Nagasaki was either
killed in a fraction of a second
or will be killed by cancer
within a year. Yes, it was during
a war, but hasn't the extreme
right wing within Islam declared
war on Western nations? I don't
want to sound insensitive for
what happened a year-and-a-
half-ago. In fact I spent that
night, to quote Dave Matthews,
with "one drink to remember
and another to forget" as I salted
my beer with tears. But to
assume the United States has the
cleanest hands in the world is
just downright gullibility and the
kind of blind faith of a cult
member.
So, we invite an extreme-right
speaker to the university. That
is excellent. I would never
dream of suppressing anyone's
right to speak. But how
irresponsible is it to do so,
especially this soon after
denying the rights of Dr. Robert
Should we begin
some Hitler-
esque campaign
littered with
mass burnings of
any documents
that [Daniel
Flynn] and Rush
Limbaugh do not
I ike J
Jensen to speak about
propaganda? Propaganda was,
after all, an art that really took
to fruition during World War I
and was mastered during World
War II. It is an art used by
BOTH sides to support their
views and one that has, over the
course of recent history, worked
radically for and against all of
us
Would Jensen put a liberal
slant on his speech?
Undoubtedly. SO WHAT?
This in any form is far less
offensive than accusing a
group of people of HATING the
nation in which we live. In an
editorial written by Jason Van
Dyke, he also accuses Jensen of
being downright un-American.
And now, Mr. Van Dyke is
supporting the direct
accusation, on the part of
Flynn, that I hate America
because I am not conservative
enough. I love America
because I can say that you are
wrong with conviction and
without fear. I love America
because I am privileged to have
so much opportunity. And if I
hate America, it is because these
bigoted people accuse me of
being a tree-hugging hippy for
not supporting them. If I am a
tree-hugging hippy, then you
are a book-burning fascist.
Anyone who claims to be
defending America must first
defend everyone's basic right to
free speech, no matter how
controversial, or opposed to
your own ideas. And in this
world, we must decide which is
the greater good: the ideal
behind America or the
American people.
And so, Mr. Flynn, I ask this
question: what do you propose
we do about this? Should we
begin to stone and hang all who
differ in opinion from yourself?
Should we begin some Flitler-
esque campaign littered with
mass burning of any
documents that you and Rush
Limbaugh do not like? Or
should we instead uphold the
freedom of speech that is so
uniformly suppressed in the
nations your own president
calls "the axis of evil." But I
digress. After all, what good is
a drama major until I am
allowed to protest whatever
human rights interest is
currently popular in Hollywood
during my Oscar acceptance
speech?
American ego poses threat to international community
by Damien Prevot
GuesfColumnist
In 2003, can a country,
without the support of the
community of nations, wage a
preventive war of which the sole
purpose is the massacre of a
nation's population and the
destruction of its resources?
Should one give in to or resist
its exercised ambition of
hegemony on the world? Let us
take into consideration the war
on terror. The Bush
administration has crossed a new
threshold in American
expansion; and it seems the
objective is not only to occupy
new territories, like the empires
of the past, but to expand the gap
in this trial of strength between
the United States and the rest of
the world so as to suppress the
temptation to resist.
The crisis' severity is
indicated by what it reveals and,
moreover, what it dissimulates.
The fortunate accord of
Germany and France to oppose
the war against Iraq reveals the
face of an America unknown, or
in the very least forgotten.
Suddenly, attitudes,
temperaments, and behaviors
become all the more brutal,
which expresses a vision of a
nation where religion, consistent
with the state, legitimizes
political action, whatever it may
be. Certain extreme forms of
violence can now hide in the
many folds of virtue and the
defense of purely selfish
interests!
Are we living in the 2 1'
century? Or have we returned
to a time that Europe has known
all too well? Today, this old
continent is not what it used to
be.
The Western world has
known a period called the
"Westphalian" period, named
for the treaty signed in 1648,
going from the Thirty Years
War to World War I, when
states had the right to declare
war on one another.
Diplomacy, based on the
principles of national
sovereignty and non-
interference, managed to keep
the outbreaks of war at a
minimum.
The Wilsonian era, which
followed the end of World War
I, attempted to construct a new
international order based on a
common detachment of
democratic institutions and on
regulating conflicts by
negotiations rather than war.
This system, however, soon
revealed its own limits. The
effects of the Second World
War, notably the rise of the
Soviet Empire and the de-
colonization of third world
countries, have limited the
application of its rules in the
North Atlantic, the only zone
where democracy can truly be
real and war excluded as a
political instrument of the state
The formation of numerous
non-democratic and totalitarian
nations has reduced very little
the specter Wilson imagined.
The Americanization of the
world economy, imposed by
globalization and the
unbalancing of forces created by
the apparition of a superpower,
attempted to advance alone and
Dominated by
hubris, the most
dangerous of
human passions,
the American
power seems to
be giving in to
the temptation
of doing
whatever it
wants ,with
unilateral
practice and
violence as a
normal solution
to all conflicts1.
impose its law. For America, the
ingredients of interventionism
are reunited. The arrival of the
Bush Junior administration will
exploit all this virtuosity.
Dominated by hubris, the
American power seems to be
giving in to the temptation of
doing whatever it wants, with
unilateral practice and violence
as a normal solution to all
conflicts.
This radicalization can easily
be explained by its
circumstances. The United
States, attacked for the first time
on its own soil, has suffered a
humiliation at the same height
as the one it has provoked.
Implacably resolute, it has
declared war on terrori sin. Since
the natural prey that was offered
had its vengeance, Bin Laden
and his invisible troops escape
the U.S. It needs another
scapegoat of sorts. Saddam
Hussein can play that role
perfectly.
This radicalization has more
ancient and profound reasons to
exist found deep in the American
soul, and no doubt marked in its
conscience, whose roots signify
its present behavior. America is
religious; the American state is
a theocracy. God, omnipresent
in many minds but also in
institutions, imposes a
Manichean vision of the world
where the righteous will battle
the wicked in the horrors of
combat before being able to
triumph. America, an elected
nation of God with arms in hand,
is the saving crusader charged to
exterminate evil. By the grace
of Heaven, Americans are the
strongest, the most just, and
consequently the best. Their
thoughts and actions are
beneficial for America, and
America's actions are beneficial
for the rest of the world.
This egocentric conception of
religion, where God is at the
service of those who pray to
him, and this rhetoric of
predestination are
extraordinarily gratifying,
legitimizing practically all that
Americans undertake as a
nation, particularly the most
violent exercice of their unequal
strength. This sentiment of
excellence motivates the
conduct of their superiors. The
system of thought, based on
absolute confidence and
infallibility risks a paradoxical
situation in assuring optimal
security as a super-power. The
United States will create an
insecurity for the rest of the
world; those that will be on its
side will know wars, rebellions,
and reprisals and will have to
suffer the resulting economic
recessions.
Men need religion, but the
biggest error is to combine it
with politics. Nothing could be
worse than to see an American
Jihad imposed on an intolerable
Islamic imperialism that has
already caused sufficient harm.
The well thought-out struggle
against terrorism is not only a
war against the countries that
foster it, but rather a long search
for solutions that may only dry
up its source.
The American State is a
country either too powerful or
too religious; adding the two
together can only have explosive
effects.
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Hendrickson, Janet & Kuckelman, Meghan. The University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 32, No. 22, Ed. 1 Wednesday, April 30, 2003, newspaper, April 30, 2003; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth201565/m1/12/?q=%22Places+-+United+States+-+Texas+-+Dallas+County+-+Irving%22: accessed July 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting University of Dallas.