Ted Kaczynski. The Weather Underground. Black Panthers. YIP. All inspired by leftist, um, thought. And that's just in this country.

Ted is current. Although a lone individual. The typical nutcase.

How long has it been since The Weather Underground did ANYTHING? The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion was in 1970. That's 32 years ago.

The Black Pathers are "leftist"? Do you know anything about their members? They're black. They're a MINORITY. Of course they're going to be "leftist". You don't see many groups trying to get themselves MORE oppressed. And civil rights WAS a "leftist" goal.

YIP? What's a YIP?

I'll extend that a bit further.

I have YET to see ANYONE claiming that the US does NOT have the RIGHT to DEFEND itself.

I have seen people who claim that "defending" this nation means pre-emptive attacks on anyone who doesn't like us.

Think about that in one of our cities. Like NYC. If someone doesn't like you, you can kick in their door and blow away their whole family and claim you did it in self-defense. And that is EXACTLY what invading Iraq is.

I have NOT seen anyone saying that we should not arrest terrorists in this country.

I have NOT seen anyone saying that the US should switch to an Islamic government.

I have NOT seen anyone saying that we should not find and punish the people who financed and supported the terrorists who attacked us.

But I DO see LOTS of people who claim that there are people making the above three statements. Yet they never provide names or locations.

I DO see LOTS of people who want us to establish standards of speech in certain groups/professions/whatever because they claim that certain individuals in those certain groups are saying certain things that are having certain effects upon this nation.

The people making those claims will be fairly precise in what is being SAID by individuals in WHICH GROUPS and how it will HURT this nation.

But they never connect the names of the individuals MAKING those statements with the statements.

Amongst COLLEGE PROFESSORS with TENURE (a rather defined group) there are certain INDIVIDUALS (undefined) making the following statements (defined)...

Without the NAMES of the INDIVIDUALS, there is no way to VERIFY the CLAIMS that Mr. Card makes.

One must simply ACCEPT that what Mr. Card says is TRUE.

Religion. With Mr. Card at the center as the enlightened prophet and the hordes of evil demons (unnamed) that the rightous must stand against.

[link|http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/19/bubba/index.html|Wired]

We all know about the Muslim teachers in America who call for the downfall of America's secular government and who openly call for American Muslims to help in the effort to make the U.S. an Islamic nation -- whether by force or conversion, they don't quite say.

Yes. And there are other groups that call for the extermination/deportation of any non-whites.

The presence of idiots does not prove anything other than idiots are present.

These American imams are among the teachers in American colleges and universities, and no one can touch them because they have tenure.

Name them. I'm getting REAL tired of people ranting about enemies they are afraid to name.

This group of teachers are often charismatic, always passionate.

And will remain nameless, it seems.

Why? Because for the past thirty years, our universities have been taken over by the politically correct establishment to such a degree that few professors who actually believe in traditional American values dare to speak.

Again, name the names. I have experience in the UW here in Seattle. I don't see anyone afraid to speak out for their beliefs.

I know that statements such as this are scoffed at by many professors, who say, "There is no problem with political correctness at our school." But in my experience, every professor who says that is merely confessing that he is so politically correct he has never run into any resistance.

By that same "logic", saying that you have no problem with neo-nazis at your college means that you're one yourself.

Again, name the names.

I know teacher after teacher, at school after school,.....

No names.

The imams of the American university regard it as their sacred duty to spread their religion ....

No names.

Of course they deny it when challenged.

Really? How is it possible to "challenge" someone when you won't IDENTIFY that person?

But I recently attended a conference of college professors held at a North Carolina university where there were sessions devoted to topics like "how to help your students get past the religious teachings of their parents."

So, US foreign policy == religious teachings of parents?

WARNING!

What shocked me was not so much that someone was teaching such a topic as that no one thought it was outrageous and they all seemed rather surprised that I found it so.

Since COLLEGE is about EDUCATION why would it be surprising to see a session on how to overcome ingrained SUPERSTITIONS?

Ah, college isn't about education. College is about indoctrination.

And people being indoctrinated really pisses off other people when the indoctrination isn't their's.

As America conducts its war against the radical Islamicists who are determined to murder Americans wherever they can in order to bring about a worldwide war between Islam and the rest of the world, the greatest danger we face is not military.

DUH! We kill more people on our roads than they've ever killed. And it is "US citizens" rather than "Americans".

It is the American imams, who are inculcating our young college students with absurdly false ideas about what America is, what we have done and are doing in the rest of the world, and why we are evil to conduct this war.

Again, no names. No specific locations.

I wish I could tell you that there was no truth on their side, but in fact they do have plenty of examples of stupid or evil actions by our government.

So, these nameless people are indoctrinating our innocent youth with FACTS?!? (in undisclosed locations)

We are not always the good guys, and we should be, and we need to have voices in our society saying so.

But the people who teach such facts are the imams, right?

But it is a far cry from facing and admitting America's faults in order to correct them, to saying that these faults make us so evil and culpable as a nation that we don't have a right to defend ourselves.

No one has EVER said we didn't have the right to defend ourselves. If a terrorist is holding your family at gun point, you have EVERY right to defend yourself and your family.

These imams go further -- they insist on viewing our war in Afghanistan and our future actions against countries like Iraq as aggressive campaigns, as if we were initiating this war rather than responding to a systematic attack.

Considering that Iraq has NOT attacked us, that would seem to be the case. If they haven't attacked us, and we put troops in their country, then who started the war?

DUH!

For my money, however, the worst danger posed by these imams is that, like the fanatical imams in Muslim countries, they are convinced that their religion is the absolute truth -- that it is above all other religions -- and so it is their mission to woo and win their students, rather than merely to present their ideas and let their students choose for themselves.

Foreign policy is NOT religion.

And they have no tolerance for anyone who disagrees with them. Those who oppose them are, in their view, stupid or evil ... or both.

Hmmm, I begin to suspect things when someone makes an obviously incorrect statement (we aren't starting the war with Iraq, they started it) and then claims that people who view it otherwise claim he is "stupid" or "evil".

Not everyone who holds the opinions I just mentioned is an American imam.

Cool. Now he gets to define who is an "imam" and who is not.

In fact, he welcomes students, faculty, and even civilians like me who disagree with him, treats them and their ideas with respect, and is even willing to change his mind when presented with evidence or reasoning that requires it.

Okay, if you're right about these things and he's willing to change his mind when presented with the "facts", but he hasn't changed his mind yet........

#1. Have you presented him with the "facts" yet? If not, why not?

#2. If you have presented him with the "facts", why did he not change his mind?

#3. Is it at all possible that YOU are the one wrong and that YOU are the one building a RELIGION our of FOREIGN POLICY?

The ones I call "imams" don't do that.

So, they're bad when they call you "evil" or "stupid", but you're okay because you call them "imams".

The irony is that most of the schools where imams teach are funded by taxes taken under threat of force from the very people whose culture and values they are trying to extirpate.

Religion, foreign policy, nameless professors at undisclosed schools and now we have TAXES taken by FORCE!

Writers NEED editors.

Most of the imams cluster in departments where ideology is easily introduced and rigorous thinking is only optional -- the ideology-based departments like women's studies, where politics always trumps reason and evidence; literature; the social sciences; the arts and humanities.

WTF? Tell me where "rigorous thinking" is involved in Art? There is no "correct" in philosophy. Sociology is not subject to controlled testing.

Engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, business, physical education -- these departments rarely contain imams, if only because they actually have a firm subject matter where results are measurable and one's colleagues don't have the habit of taking pie-in-the-sky philosophizing seriously.

Someone hasn't run into any "Creation Scientists", has he? You don't see the "imams" because you aren't exposing yourself to any of the non-traditional concepts.

Besides, we want our kids to be well-educated. We want them to hear ideas different from those they learned at home. We want them, in other words, to have a genuine, well-rounded university education.

Based upon the previous content, I'd say that different ideas are NOT something you want your children exposed to.

We don't want to punish professors who raise questions about the war.

As long as they're questions you're comfortable with, I'm sure that's true. If they ask the wrong questions, you want to remove them.

But we also don't want professors to shelter behind tenure while agitating and propagandizing against the war, against our country, and against our traditional values.

Like I said, you want the ability to remove people who hold views you don't like. "Traditional values" used to mean women stayed home, couldn't vote and were owned by their husbands. It meant that slaves were slaves because God made them to serve their masters.

College should be a place for reason, scholarship, careful consideration of evidence, and open discussion in a marketplace of ideas where everyone treats everyone else's ideas with respect. The problem is that the imams are already doing their best to eliminate that climate.

How did they manage to do THAT? What is it about college that seems to attract these freaks? Is there some conspiracy to populate the classrooms with anti-American fanatics?

If they can't back up their claims with FACTS then they will be mocked by their students.

If they have the FACTS to support their statements, then maybe those statements are CORRECT!

Third, American businessmen need to stop requiring college degrees for their employees outside a few narrow specialties where it is actually valuable. Almost everything their employees need to know, they will learn on the job anyway. Don't force parents to send their students to college in order to get jobs for which a college education is not really required.

Great. A nation that thinks Hobbes is Calvin's stuffed tiger. I hold the opposite view. I believe that every person should continue to take classes for his/her entire life. There is always SOMETHING else to learn.

That's not what our tax money was appropriated to do, and we have a right to insist on an accounting when a professor is ranging far outside his area of expertise into political realms where all citizens have equal authority.

Authority does NOT equal expertise.

The last thing we should do is try to fire professors we disagree with.

Yet you rant about them hiding behind tenure. If you don't want to fire them, why bring that up?

That's what the imams do; we won't defeat their influence by becoming as oppressive as they are. If they start acting like real college professors -- being open-minded, rigorous, rational, and aware of what the evidence does and does not justify -- then they will no longer be imams and we will no longer have a reason to oppose them.

So, if they start acting in ways you approve of, you won't have a problem with them. But if they don't..............

Our beliefs and values are strong -- they can survive any kind of fair-minded, rigorous examination.

No. Strong means you can demonstrate those values under UNFAIR conditions.

All we ask is a level playing field, and open marketplace of ideas.

If you need a level playing field, then you've already lost. Have the FACTS to show and be able to DISPROVE the allegations of the "imams".

Only religions will stand in the way of facts.

They should end the ideological litmus tests that have made so many university departments uniformly leftist and anti-American and anti-religious.

Does anyone here actually believe that universities check to make sure their professors are sufficiently anti-American before granting tenure?

They should stop letting their faculties make the universities into revolutionary opponents of America, and return to making the universities into places where all ideas are questioned, tested, and fairly discussed.

As long as you approve of the questions and how they're tested and discussed.

The universities would be wise to take this seriously. As more and more citizens become aware of what their tax money is being spent to teach, especially in time of war, it is quite possible for demagogues to seize upon the issue and make it a rallying cry.

It HAS been a "rallying cry". Check out the student protests to the Vietnam war.

Witch hunts by the right wing against the left would be just as ugly as the witch hunts the left wing now mounts against the right on many a politically correct campus.

I suppose that, if I don't see such witch hunts, it just means that I'm part of them.

Because real scholars are never afraid to show their work to the public and submit it for free and open examination.

And you have still not named the "imams" here nor the schools they "teach" at.