The Real Narrative of the RNC Protest: Will Anyone Remember?
On Monday in Perry Harvey Park, a young woman from the resuscitated Students for a Democratic Society stood on stage and repeated the popular line from college classes about imperialist wars. She then led a chant: “Education is a right. Fight, fight, fight!”
A student from the Student Labor Action Project, which is a unit of Jobs with Justice, addressed the audience, “men and women and those who do not conform to gender.”
A “Rock the Vote” bus drove near the protest site in Ybor City on Tuesday. Rock the Vote is getting a benefit concert at the Democratic National Convention by the Foo Fighters. A look at the issues confirms a partisan mission.
President Obama is desperately courting college students, luring them with promises of loan subsidies. He was turned away from the campus of the University of Virginia. But this president, in an unprecedented manner, has imposed himself into school rooms across the nation by delivering a message directly to children in his annual back-to-school speech. Four years ago they were too young to vote. Not now. But you have to wonder about political candidates who have to rely on the support of the “youth” and children.
The Democrats also have the support of teachers and professors. At Ohio State University, an English professor sent a message to colleagues imploring them to allow an Obama campaign worker to address their classes. Textbooks now present the words of Obama as hallmarks of eloquence.
“Youth Vote Remains an Elusive Target for Republicans” reads the headline in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The enthusiasm among young voters is waning, but Obama still holds a lead. The reporter quotes Susan MacManus, a University of South Florida political science professor who “moderated an independent panel discussion … hosted by the Young Invincibles, a nonprofit youth advocacy group.”
The name “Invincibles” implies bravery, resourcefulness. Yet, a look at the web page reveals that the organization is “fiscally sponsored by the Center for Community Change, a longstanding organization committed to building the power and capacity of low-income people across the country.” The partner organizations are a Who’s Who of the far left. Student debt is the appeal on the main page, yet the message is that we need more college graduates.
Young voters — because of the education they’ve received — are vulnerable to such appeals. The SDS, reincarnated by the original members of the SDS like Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson, and Mike Klonsky, is something new to most of them. Only about two of my students had even heard of the SDS. The web site states that SDS has merged with Occupy Colleges based on “common principles of participatory democracy.”
“Participatory democracy,” of course, is a euphemism for soviet democracy (another part of history students are not likely to learn) and it comes from the manifesto of the original SDS. But students are taught that protest is a sacred American rite. It’s in their lessons about the 1960s. Virtue is presented as synonymous with fighting corporations and Republicans on behalf of the oppressed.
Civic discourse has been abandoned for the shouted slogans at rallies and heckling. At conferences, English teachers and professors discuss ideas for incorporating the “rhetoric” of protests into their lesson plans. The idea of civic duty through military service or traditional volunteer agencies has been replaced by college-sponsored “community service.”
College students see a bleak future with a lot of debt. The only hope they have, they are led to believe, is from the government, the government that will subsidize their educations and provide jobs. They are supplicants, like the peasants of yore to their lord. But as I mentioned earlier, few college students have heard the word, much less understand how such a class is being created in the United States.
I have witnessed firsthand media attempts to make something out of nothing. I know also that what will be presented in the history lessons will not be the reality, which is the pathos of a fizzled movement by a sorry group of people. Instead, like a New York Times lesson plan peddled to teachers, students will be expected to debate in all seriousness inane slogans like “We are the 99%.”
No, they definitely are not. That is the lesson of the anti-RNC “protests.”
These “young” people and associated potheads must have too much time on their hands. There seems to be no evidence that they have any belief system other than condemning the Republican party for its beliefs. They are really the 49% who pay no taxes. Of course, many of them would happily do so if the obama administration hadn’t wrecked the economy and eliminated several million jobs. Pity, but this is how Rome went into decline: the government bought people off with bread and circuses, sort of what will happen shortly in Charlotte. Bring on the clowns.
Back in the 1960s, Communists supported efforts to dupe vulnerable, troubled teenagers.
This continued throughout the Cold War era. I graduated in 1988, and often have wondered about the East German SSD, or Stasi, presence on the campus of my alma mater at that time. (The Soviets usually farmed the task of U.S. campus agitprop out to the former DDR, as Germans were less conspicuous than Russians.)
Had I the time and resources, I would jump at the chance to look through the opened Stasi files in Berlin, to find out about university-based operatives during the time I was there. I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that most students at large state universities during the 1960s-1980s probably were at least somewhat acquainted with a person who either worked or informed for the Stasi.
My father was a domestic Cold Warrior and had a friend named Carl Prussian (I may not have spelled that right)they are both gone now. Carl was appalled that my Dad let one of my older sisters attend Humbolt U. here in California. He had been a Communist Agitator (he latter turned himself in to the FBI then worked for them) and claimed Humbolt to be his most fruitful recruiting grounds. Mr. Radosh and Mr. Horowitz can testify to this on campus shenanigans as they both used to be of that persuasions. My admiration for Mr. Radosh is what led me here to PJ, yet those with first hand experience of this are not listened to. Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley both tried to blow the whistle and few listened though history has vindicated them. My Dad used to go on about “Off Campus” agitators but he did not listen to the Beatles so what did he know. I am grateful I was able to tell him he was correct before he passed on. The treachery of the 60′s and those who perpetuated it are now deeply embedded in our Bureaucracies and Universities and write the history books that lie or only tell part of the truth. Yes this time has come and this should be further revealed but like “Venona” that pretty well laid out the Soviets infiltration of our Government in the 30′s still goes unnoticed. Yes today school children should have the name and shame of Benadict Arnold and Joel Barr down pat and I bet few of you know who Joel Barr was, “hint” he was not an artist.
Occupy were promising us the Second Coming of Chicago 1968. What do you think happened? Were they actually unable to muster their troops, or (my conspiracy-minded inclination), did they get orders to more-or-less call it off in order not to produce “bad optics” for the movement and sympathy for the GOP? Would like to read anyone’s and everyone’s thoughts on this… REALLY wish we could get Andrew Breitbart’s…
Probably unable to muster the troops. Isaac scared many of them off. Add to that the paucity of what they have to protest. We have an all-volunteer military, not involuntary draftees. The war isn’t shown on television.
It’s not 1968 anymore. They need to stop trying to relive the glory days (or what they see as the glory dsys). The country might get a break when all of us boomers are gone from the scene.
Isaac scared many of them off.
They likely thought the heavy rainfall would be too much like a bath.
I live in Tampa and was there at the Monday protest and parade, saw the same people you did (we probably crossed paths). I’d say these people are the true One Percent: the communists, kooks, malcontents, professional agitators (and rather lame at that vocation), drifters, gray ponytails, aimless naive kids. The Code Pink crones with their tawdry paper mache vagina outfits are completely foolish. All these people exude a sense of querulous impotence, much like the various British leftists Orwell described in the 1930′s.
Here is hoping they are saving all the “good” protesting for the Democrats! Homecoming for the sixties radicals who are now “the man.”
While we’re laughing at these melodramatic, raggedy, rambling nitwits and their small turnout, please keep in mind that the better dressed and more organized members of their ranks have been hard at work for a century. They have…
…completely taken charge of the school system from kindergarten all the way through college.
…latched onto a huge chunk of the information media. (And, sorry, I’m just not calmed by “Never fear! The Internet is here!” They’re still able to command the narrative to the point where “birther” shuts down discussion even among a round table of 100% conservatives.)
…captured enough of the scientific establishment to keep pressing the Global Warming hoax no matter how much evidence mounts against it. (This goes for a plethora of other environmental lies.)
…absolutely OWNED the entertainment industries. This is a giant point! While responsible folk decided that life upon the wicked stage was a hollow existence of trivial nonsense, the left rightly deduced that it was the way to steer the culture and take command of a generation. Don’t believe me? What brought gay marriage to the level where it is? Politics? Science? No, the next generation was swayed by propaganda like “Glee.” And now they say to me “We all can’t wait till your bigoted generation dies off so we can finally be free!”
…murdered over 50 million of the unborn.
…weakened the military.
…created so many entitlements that it’s become the norm for government (over half the budget), and even conservative candidates are forced to agree to SOME entitlements somewhere – just, y’know, the “reasonable” ones.
A couple of bewildered hippies in a park doesn’t make me forget the destructive power that the left has acquired in every corner of the culture.
They may not be “the 99%,” but they don’t have to be, considering all the important ground they took possession of.
Sadly, your US Colleges’ “grievance studies” programs have wiped out most of your hard earned historical American heritage. Most of these kids reside in their mothers’ basements with substandard educations not fit for the open market. Consider that China has more “honors students” that the US has students, in total. America is deep in the hurt locker.
So, back to their Cheetos-stained keyboards–in between World of War Craft raids–while mom cooks another pizza and they comment on blog sites with their verbal gymnastics. Sigh, America was once the Mecca of learning. Now? Not so much.
Clearly your education system doesn’t teach logic or reason. But is really good at teaching anectdote writing!
There were protesters?
Zzzzzzzzz…….
as long as we allow these protests to happen, our message will never get out. at some point these people need to be told and forced to sit down and shut up. a difference of opinion is 1 thing. and im all for a variety of opinions even the ones i disagree with…ESPECIALLY the ones i disagree with. However these people are not ther eto debate, but to soley disrupt. the own movements and their silimailar groups are professional agitatirs. the left has no truth in it whatso ever and they know this. just power hungry elites fooling stupid selfish brat kids, and mentally deficient homless etc. and getting them to disrupt intelligent people and focus on them. sorry but they dont have a right to speak and NO their opinios no longer matter. this country is diving off a cliff and we are focussing on a 2 yr old scraming about sponge bob elmopants. its time we used saul alinskies tactics against him and make that commie traitor spin in his grave
Dr. Grabar, once more your pointed narrative is succinct. While your point of view is well known, you do not brow beat the reader into taking your exact stance. Rather, like Oliver Wendell Holmes suggested, it is “the free expression of ideas in the marketplace” that will allow the informed viewer to adopt or reject this.
The abject failure of those opposed to historical facts, the Constitution, and the lessons that are never taught about the evils of Communism are lost on these poor souls.
May God bless you in your valiant coursework to imbue your students with a little responsible didactic discourse.
I was at University for the first 1968 and remember it was a constant battle to get the education I was paying for (working three part time jobs and every summer, and borrowing what I absolutely had to) in between Vietnam Awareness Days and other such nonsense. I had occasion to try to discuss capitalism with a 22 year old Canadian boy the other day and finally told him to come back in 25 years when he had something to say. I know I was an idiot at the age of 22, but by then I had stood on all seven continents and met people outside my social circle, and was living 3,000 miles from my parents. (In my youth we would have lived in a tent in the park rather than move back home after we graduated — from high school!)But one consolation I have is that a lot of these dorks and dweebs at least in Canada are being run over by trains, as they float along with things jammed in their ears that can drown out an air horn, and their screen saver faces on.
Maybe the parents of all these snot nosed bastards threatened to close their trust funds if all they were going to do was hang around Occupy sites.
Mary, great article!
OK, I give up. Now the prez is blathering about the 2%. That’s as harebrained as the ragtag mob screeching about the 99% Now, has education gotten so bad in this country that about half the population thinks 99% plus 2% equals 100%. Or did someone forget to tell the protesters that Obama figured that 1% just might not be enough to provide for his giveaways to cronies and has thereby lowered them to the 98%??
Since the democrat strategy of encouraging everyone to covet breaks God’s laws (the 10th commandment) they are fighting a losing battle. Coveting is a sin, envy is a deadly sin. Stand clear of these people everyone. You don’t want to be collateral damage.
I bet almost all of these protestors get their pensions paid for by you and me and not their own savings.