K.McCaffrey --- In light of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, it has been interesting to watch the way certain schools have reconsidered hosting a ROTC program on their campuses. As far as New York City schools go, currently only Fordham University in the Bronx hosts ROTC training for students from Columbia and NYU, the largest private university in the country. The commute is a real pain, I know several students who do it almost daily, and things would be an awful lot easier if Columbia reopened for training. There has been a debate raging on campus, and the students of Columbia showed their true colors:
"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.
Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.
"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."
Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.
There is nothing intrinsically bad about disagreeing with the war if you have a set of assumptions, reasons, or objections that lead you to believe it is wrong (in my opinion, anyway). However, when someone who nearly sacrificed their life in the name of your freedom tries to make a point or suggestion, shut up with the politics and at least try to listen.
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St John's University offers Army ROTC on boith its Queens and Stten Island campuses.
ReplyDeleteWho can blame those students for yelling insults at someone for whom they have no respect or feeling? That's what their modern educational milieu has taught them to do for far more than a decade. BTW, they are not reflecting their parents' values, but their teachers.
ReplyDeleteOf course [even though they would deny it] they are still too intellectually undeveloped to comprehend this. They are in the midst of a maturation process, both physical and intellectual. They've been taught not to control their hormones, so why should they control their emotions and intellectual excreta? There's no need for discretion. Say and do whatever feels good to do. That is their "right".
Years later, their selective memory mechanisms will obliterate any recollection of today's actions, and if shown a videotape of the occasion would be shocked, shocked to behold their one-time shallow and callow-nesses. Most of us have been there. Ergo the saying, "There, but for the Grace of G-d, ......". Well, you know.
I wonder how many of those students will look back on their conduct in twenty years or so and be ashamed. I took part in a rally/protest today and driving home I thought about a protest that I took part in 1974. Jeez, what a difference growing up makes.
ReplyDeleteHippies never die. We just grow up, get jobs, have families and see the light. Bless Anthony Maschek for his service and dedication to our country.
There is no more insufferable, self-righteous creature on this earth than a lefty undergrad. This story just makes me sick.
ReplyDeleteSo many of them have absolutely no class.
Conservative speakers invited om campuses are often shouted down or assaulted with pies.
Of the many incidents of students stealing and/or burning the student newspaper when they find something not to their liking, I believe every single incident has been perpetrated by students of the left.
What do we want? Tolerance! When do we want it? Now!
DADT was just an excuse. These universities are really just anti-military. Their true colors are showing.
ReplyDeleteOne persona said "racist" and the moderator rebuked them and warned against further outbursts. Nothing else. Watch the video. Startlingly, the Post sensationalized this a bit and Fox followed.
ReplyDeleteSee, here's the thing that bothers me about this.
ReplyDeleteOn stage, you have a man who is healing from the very wounds he took protecting these people.
They're so busy with their lives and their own opinions that they actually can't see the truth when it stands in front of them.
49erdweet said something that I find interesting. These children, IN THE YEARS TO COME, will be shocked at their behavior.
Sadly, I don't think we have that kind of time.
They will be forced in a very few short years to make serious choices that affect their well being and they're not prepared for it.
Sadly, nestorma, there has been far more vitriol than just one person's cry of "racist." I've had Iraq war vet friends of mine who've returned home and taken college courses, and while some students are friendly there are others who openly call them baby killers and f'd up pawns of the Bush administration. Columbia sounds like it's no different in this regard, which is too bad.
ReplyDeleteNow if McCaffery, a decorated hero, had decided instead to blame jews for everything, round up gay people and hang them, claim to be building a stockpile of nuclear weapons, and then call on his buddies to openly shoot folks who disagree with him, then Columbia would have welcomed him with open arms given him a forum to share his world views like they did Ahmadinejad. But I digress.