Not a Real Victory: Columbia ROTC Voted Down |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TEPID LIBERALS POLLUTE DEBATE AGAIN; MOST OF THE LEFT ALONG FOR THE RIDE; WHEN WILL IT WAKE UP?
"Obviously, we are not condemning the outcome at all. Rather, we condemn the path and the process that the Columbia University Senate and some of the so-called activists agitating against ROTC took to reach that outcome," said a spokesperson for the Federation's revolutionary socialist and anti-imperialist Ultra-Left Faction (ULF). Nearly all the public arguments at Columbia University against ROTC have centered around the United States military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy (DADT). DADT bars lesbian, gay, and bisexual people within the military from openly identifying themselves. Opponents argued that ROTC's return would violate Columbia's non-discrimination policy because of DADT. A soft liberal named Nate Walker (www.natewalker.org) emerged as a "leader" of anti-ROTC efforts. We must pause for a tangential discussion of Walker. Despite having zero major published works, zero scholarly citations, and zero sustained presence in major periodicals for the general public, Walker pompously declares himself a "public intellectual" on his website. His site contains numerous self-adoring portraits of himself and represents liberal pomp of high order. In writings on his site, and in the gaseous presentation he made before the Columbia Senate, Walker centered his arguments almost entirely around DADT. He mostly ignored the broader issues: the behavior of the US military abroad and whether Columbia wished to help further it by training more of its agents, and more specifically with respect to universities, the incursion of military interests into higher education and its consequences. About the closest Walker came to moving beyond the narrow bounds of anti-DADT was a vague clause on the military's "countless disregard for human decency," an empty pronouncement contradicted by Walker's own voting behavior, discussed below. Those who rest their anti-ROTC arguments solely on DADT give others reason to infer that ROTC might otherwise be acceptable if not for the irritating DADT procedural impediment. Indeed, this is the view Mr. Walker expressed in a prior Senate ROTC task force deliberation, when he "vote[d] in favor of returning ROTC if there is no longer discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual service-members in the military." Though he may talk all he wants about "countless disregard for human decency," in the end, it apparently was all about DADT for Walker. DADT is a red herring that consumed most of the anti-ROTC opposition at Columbia and the liberal faction of its LGBT community. Without DADT, the hostility of the military to women and homosexuals remains virtually intact, most notably documented by the folklorist and anthropologist Carol Burke in Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High and Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture. It remains steeped in sexist tradition and heteronormative-masculinist-macho pretension. With their myopic focus on DADT, the self-appointed anti-ROTC liberal leadership eclipsed two issues: systematic homophobia within the military, and the relationship between the military and the academy. Although, on questions of ideology and strategy, the Federation occasionally differs with the International Socialist Organization, we applaud the ISO for attempting to move outside of the narrow anti-DADT line. The ISO attempts were met with hostility from the so-called campus left. A Federation spokesperson criticized the "masturbatory, self-important, self-congratulating, and fucking sick euphoria" surrounding the announcement of the vote. "The euphoric reaction, the loud applause, the obnoxious hoots are symptomatic of two things: the narrow analytical scope of the anti-ROTC effort here and the pompousness of Columbia student 'activists' who cheer what in fact was a rather piddling institution-level victory of slightly more than symbolic consequence," he said. The Federation has recently re-opened its Press Office and inaugurated a series of dialogues and forums on "How We Can Break and Recover from the Idiot Left." Past and planned future statements against left-wing anti-intellectualism, faddish "anarchism," political vegetarianism, communal living, "independent" (and borderline illiterate) left-wing media, food co-ops, Food Not Bombs, the liberal "diversity" racket, and the blind support of pro-war candidate John Kerry, among others, have infuriated (or will) large sections of its membership, which has dwindled by more than 50% since the Federation's ideological purges. "I think more people on the so-called left and liberal spectrum of opinion hate us than those on the right," said a spokesperson. [end commnique] The Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers is an anti-racist, anti-capitalist student insurgent group based at Columbia University. For more information, e-mail ceodeath99@yahoo.com. Visit their website at: www.ceodeath.org. Other Statements by the GRFF500K *
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Death of Seymour Melman (1917-2004) |