In Defense Of Scott Simon — And AMERICA!!
In Defense Of Scott Simon — And AMERICA!!
By
Ken Eliasberg
If you thought that Jeremiah Wright was a bit over the top when he described the events of 9/11 as “America’s chickens coming home to roost,” let me assure you that he
is not alone in his perverse thinking; he is in the company of much of the American Academy (or at least that portion of it devoted to social studies — whatever that means these days). To these sanctimonious know-nothing academics, Islamic terrorists (oops, freedom fighters) are not evil; they are merely responding to the “evil” that is America. Of course that’s why they are attacking Christians in Chechnya and Lebanon, Hindus in India, and Jews in Israel (and in whatever other locations they can run down members of any of these religious groups). In short, in their freedom-fighting escapades, they are both geographically and spiritually equal opportunity killers — all in the name of an understandable, if not necessarily a good, cause. To our sheltered and confused academicians (not all of them, but a goodly number) we are the bad guys, and we deserve whatever punishment is visited on us as a result of our imperialistic overreaching. And you thought Ward Churchill might be a bit extreme! According to a substantial number of our social studies “scholars,” these restlessly murderous fellows are just troubled souls responding to America’s terrorism, i.e. our post-WWII foreign policy.
These guys amaze me; a good many of our “historians” operate much like a court reporter; they are there to transcribe the proceedings, while not necessarily having the knowledge, let alone the expertise, to properly evaluate the legal arguments at play. Thus, for some time I have been astounded by the lack of knowledge of economics, politics, the law, finance, realpolitik, and almost any other subject that these guys bring to bear in reporting on history. Forget matters like logic or even common sense; all that is necessary is a deep-seated bias against one’s own country; perhaps I do them an injustice, but it certainly seems to me that it is their profound hostility toward their own country that interferes with the process of bringing any sort of enlightened judgment to bear.
In ensuing columns we’re going to go through the arguments that these academic airheads have marshalled in support of their Anti-Americanism, but first let’s take a look at some current outpourings of this nonsense, using the recent happenings in Mumbai as a jump off point for the discussion. The smoke had hardly settled in Mumbai (following the death of some 175 “innocents” — although this characterization has also been in dispute by our academic whiz kids), when a professor at the University of Chicago, Martha Nussbaum, produced a column for the L.A. Times (“A Cloud Over India’s Muslims”) in which she expressed concern for the Muslim population in India (the second largest Muslim population in the world). The focus of her concern was that, following the outrage visited on various Christian, Hindu, and Jewish civilians by these Muslim “terrorists” (forgive me if I call a spade a spade), the wrath of the afflicted might be taken out on India’s Muslim population, i.e the result of something akin to racial profiling. Helloooo — 175 people have just been killed, and this moron’s only concern is that this horrific development might lead to some untoward form of inappropriate retaliation. How about pausing for a moment to express some concern for the victims and just maybe a bit of outrage with respect to this form of conduct?
Then there is Deepak Chopra — whose credentials in the geopolitical arena seem to be based on little more than that he is the master of aroma therapy, and thus he finds the “aroma” of American policy vis a vis Muslims as not to his liking. And, as a consequence, he too chimes in that, when all is said and done, despicable Islamist behavior is our fault. Interesting — I thought Chopra had already over extended his reach while confining it to the touchy-feely arena; now, apparently, he has left the realm of the personal and has become a global spokesman for terrorists — perhaps he should go among them with his touchy-feely cure-alls and thereby tame these restive souls.
And, finally we come to our home-grown authority whose wisdom appears in this paper in close proximity to my own. The good professor has chosen to renew his “lack-of-innocent-civilians” argument with respect to the recent outrage in Mumbai - in a column entitled Open Letter to Scott Simon: “Evil Terrorists” (Scott Simon being a talk show host for a liberal radio station). Simon, in the professor’s eyes, had incorrectly asserted that these killers were “evil” — an assertion that I believe to be clearly and entirely correct. You may recall that the good professor asserted this argument in connection with 9/11, i.e. that that tragedy was of our making (in a letter to the editor, since at that time he was not writing a regular column for the Examiner). At the time I responded with several heated columns — heated because I was so overwhelmed by what I believed — and continue to believe — to be the absurdity of this line of argument. I was somewhat na