-Caveat Lector- Campus Marxists are a funny bunch--until they end up running your country http://207.216.246.197/magazine/p15i010820f.html SOMETIMES I don't know how I did it. I actually spent 11 years in academia without going insane. I think I'll be all right, but the flashbacks still haunt me. I'm free now, fortunately. Perhaps that's what counts most. I'll never go back. Try to imagine being an �migr� from the Soviet Union, as I am, and keeping company with left-wing Canadian "intellectuals" who think they are oppressed. Picture coming from a society where a myriad of your relatives simply disappeared; where this relative or that family friend died under interrogation and torture for his or her beliefs--or for simply nothing at all. Think about Alexander Solzhenitsyn's account of the tortures that the Stalinist machinery inflicted for the objective of extracting "confessions." These tortures typically included lying a man naked on the floor, forcing his legs apart, and then an interrogator stepping on his testicles, applying increasing pressure until the confession surfaced. Keep in mind that many people even then refused to "confess." Then think about the Soviet secret police raping daughters and sons in front of their fathers and mothers--all for the sake of extracting "confessions." Now visualize me sitting in a graduate studies lounge in Toronto, listening to my colleagues explain to me that communism "isn't really so bad," that the Soviet Union made some "remarkable achievements" and that Western democratic-capitalism is the most oppressive system of all. At the same time, picture my lecturers having absolutely no respect for a free exchange of ideas on this subject. Both of my grandfathers were exterminated by Stalinist terror. My father and mother both barely escaped the Gulag. But here I am, with PhD students, being treated to a one-hour discussion about "homophobia" on campus. My colleagues are agonizing about how "Homophobia-Free Zone" pink stickers must be put on every door in the university. "But what if a professor or a teaching assistant refuses to have one put on his door?" one of them asks indignantly. After a few seconds of silence, another answers, "Well, then a committee might just have to be set up where these people will be taken to account." Serious head-nods follow. Fascinating. Simply fascinating. The great issues of our time. The "progressive" graduate students having this conversation take tremendous pride in how "cutting-edge" they are. They see themselves as being at the forefront of social progress; they are able to see things that the rest of us simply can't see. That's because they have been blessed with the "progressive" vision--and are thus the self-designated representatives of "the people." Having put themselves above humanity and human history, they believe that it is their ideas, and their ideas alone, for which the world has been waiting ten thousand years. And that's why the "Homophobia-Free Zone" pink stickers have to be stuck on every door, on every wall in the university. How else are the utopians going to depersonalize and politicize their own personal problems? How else are they going to camouflage their hatred of human individuals in particular, if they can't profess loudly their love of humanity in general? Sacrificing real human flesh and blood on the altar of ideals is no easy task. It takes shrewd strategizing and commitment. I remember when my family first moved from Russia, my mom was constantly crying. She was separated from her mother and brother--who were also afraid to engage in correspondence because it was too dangerous for them. Sometimes my mom would cry for what seemed like forever. I will never forget, as a nine-year-old, that feeling in my heart when my mom cried like that. My consolations seemed to soothe her slightly, but I understood well that I could not end her grief. The Soviet system did that to my mother. And that's why I am not amused by the politics on campus. I am not humoured by endless discussions of how we are all oppressed because we are being "attacked" by Pepsi commercials. "By trying to tell us that we are not cool if we don't drink Pepsi," a graduate student once laboured to explain to me, "the capitalist machinery practises the politics of exclusion. By trying to pretend it offers us choice, it actually negates choice." Brilliant! And there is no debate permitted on this subject. The anti-capitalist theme is simply just drilled into your head. My mother's father was executed by the Soviet secret police. He did not have the luxury of being oppressed by Pepsi commercials. One day, when I was nine years old and living in Halifax, my father and I were on our way to church. As we walked near the entrance, I unthinkingly spat on the ground. In a very serious but patient way, my father said to me: "It is okay to spit outside of KGB headquarters, but never in front of a place such as this." I never did it again. I was very wrong that day, because I had ignorantly spat on holy ground. But there is another environment where it is perfectly appropriate, namely on today's politically correct campus. And there are certain individuals--the most spoiled and self-centred people I have ever met--who remind me of the scum who fostered the Soviet experiment, and who promote the same ideas that gave us the Soviet Gulag, Mao's Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot's killing fields. Working fervently to destroy their own society, they praise other societies--such as the one that caused my mother's ocean of tears. They are our left-wing intellectuals. I spit in their faces. Jamie Glazov is a Toronto writer with a PhD in history [Forwarded For Information Purposes Only - Not Necessarily Endorsed By The Sender - A.K. Pritchard] ------------------------------ A.K. Pritchard http://www.ideasign.com/chiliast/ http://rosie.acmecity.com/songfest/189/ To subscribe to "The Republican" email list - just ask! [EMAIL PROTECTED] "There was a time in America, a better time, when: We openly and proudly expressed our love of God and country; we did not lock our doors; our streets were safe to walk and drive; we honored our heroes; we cherished our founders, their gifts, their sacrifices, their courage, and their love of America; we sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner'; we pledged allegiance to our beloved country; we respected our system of laws and the Constitution; and we worked, raised families and prayed together as one people under one flag. 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