ROTC and Harvard
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halfsigma.com
Harvard professor Greg Mankiw says that Havard should end its ROTC ban because "Harvard has a moral obligation to play an appropriate role in our nation's defense"
If the real reason behind Harvard's ban on ROTC is to protest the military's perceived backwards attitudes towards homosexuals, then it's a pretty hypocritical ban. The army is controlled by the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, but you don't see Harvard preventing those branches of government from recruiting on campus. Just the opposite, Harvard has an entire school, the Kennedy School of Government, devoted to training people to work for the evil government which violates the rights of homosexual members of the military.
Unlike working for the Supreme Court or for the President, being in the military is considered to be for the lower classes, so it's not a career opportunity that interests many Harvard students. Thus Harvard can painlessly protest government policies without causing any harm to its students. A genuine protest, such as rejecting funding from the government, is out of the question.
Leftists hate the military because the military fosters nationalism and the leftists hate nationalism. Leftists would hate ROTC even without the military's discrmination against homosexuals. I'm sure this is the real reason why Harvard limits its protest of government policy to ROTC (and a few other military recruitment programs).
October 12, 2006
Right about Harvard hating the military, right about the military being for the proles and thus not of much interest to Harvard grads, partially right about why the left hates the military.
Leftist hatred of the military has a couple of reasons behind it. Probably the biggest is the leftist embrace of nonviolence. No, really. Lefties generally don't believe in violence at this point in time: the French Revolution was a long time ago, and with the Communists gone there's no revolutionary government you could support. Notice such examples as the nuclear freeze movement and leftist attempts to ban violence on TV(as opposed to rightist attempts to ban sex).
The military is also masculine, nationalist, hierarchical, conformist, and a bunch of other things that set lefties' teeth on edge, but you don't see this sort of bile directed at the fire department, which is masculine, nationalist (although only incidentally), hierarchical, and conformist but has the essentially nonviolent mission of putting out fires.
Of COURSE if we closed down the military we'd be invaded by Mexicans eager to steal our stuff. I'm not saying the leftist embrace of nonviolence is realistic. I'm just saying it's why they think that way.
Posted by: SFG | October 12, 2006 at 05:59 PM
Leftists don't hate all violence. They are eager to defend it (or excuse it) when it is perpetrated by one of their pet groups, such as the Palestinians.
Posted by: JAS | October 13, 2006 at 06:25 AM |
