Grow up, campus nazis

So, Gunter Grass has admitted he was a member of the SS. To this, I say "so what?"

Those who say they never did anything stupid in their youth are either lying, stupid, don't remember it, or politicians. I know rightwingers like to pretend that just because you are legally an adult you are capable of making rational adult decisions, but unless you have no soul, which I suspect is the problem for many of them, you can't escape the fervor of youth. So Grass was a flagwaver. He was a patriot who wanted to fight for his country. Yeah, I'm not a fan of uber-patriotism, that form of sheeplike flagwaving that renders the word "patriot" meaningless. But Grass saw the light. The man wrote the greatest anti-fascism novel in the brief history of post-war literature. And one thing I can do is forgive people for their past transgressions. I would do it for 20 year old American kids, too, if they opened their minds a bit.

You can't have an ideology at age 20. You haven't even lived life. Yet so many of today's college students believe they have it all figured out by the time they are in college, and they are attempting to block anything that may open their minds to new ideas. What is especially frightening is these students who have developed an ideology around this age are trying to stifle debate in universities. Here's another of the many examples:

It used to be said that academic rows were vicious because the stakes were so small. That's no longer true in America, where a battle is underway on campuses over what can be said about the Middle East and US foreign policy.

Douglas Giles is a recent casualty. He used to teach a class on world religions at Roosevelt University, Chicago, founded in memory of FDR and his liberal-inclined wife, Eleanor. Last year, Giles was ordered by his head of department, art historian Susan Weininger, not to allow students to ask questions about Palestine and Israel; in fact, nothing was to be mentioned in class, textbooks and examinations that could possibly open Judaism to criticism.

Students, being what they are, did not go along with the ban. A young woman, originally from Pakistan, asked a question about Palestinian rights. Someone complained and Professor Giles was promptly fired.

You can imagine the type of student who complained, a kid from a middle class family who thinks it is richer than it is, a kid who has been sheltered from everything, who was not allowed to run on a playground, who went to a school where they taught you how to take a test to graduate. There is no thinking involved here.

The wackjobs that have created organizations like Campus Watch who think conservative students are oppressed in universities have some sort of mental disease that creates these delusions of paranoia about how liberal professors are out to get them. Since these people have no sense of reason or rationality, they can't make the connection that the more you learn, the more you experience, the more exposed you are to a wide variety of ideas, the more a narrow ideology doesn't make sense.

A university is a place to learn. If you are not willing to learn, to debate, to engage yourself in the world around you, don't go. A university is not some place your mommy and daddy sends you so you can get a piece of paper to get a job. It is not a place you go to destroy your liver. Sadly, though, education, actual knowledge, is so little respected in this country that you have these people who think that, who complain every time they hear something that doesn't fit into their little sheltered world. You know what? There's a word for that kind of mentality. It's called fascist.

If you haven't read the Tin Drum, do it. The parallels between the government in the book and the neocon agenda can be quite harrowing. And if you are a rightwinger who happens to be reading this, don't go and watch the movie. Read the book. Use your brain for once.