Watched the media's coverage of the reception given Senator McCain at the New School in NY and Secretary Rice at Boston College. They were invited to deliver commencement addresses to the newest crop of northeastern elitist bedwetters and were heckled and disrespected by mindless children. I use the term children loosely--some of the graduates acted more like infants than children. While they have every right as American citizens to disagree with the political positions of their commencement speakers, I think these draft-dodger progeny abused their freedom of speech when they heckled them and attempted to disrupt their addresses. Seems to me that there ought to be a few yankee families ashamed of the disrepectful conduct of their kids. But then again, their tye-dyed-jeans-in-the-trunk parents probably approve.
This sort of stuff went on to a much greater degree during the Vietnam War. I heard one commentator lament that there was not more anti-war sentiment on campus, like that in which he, no doubt, participated during his hippy dippy youth. There is one huge reason why there has been little or no anti-war protest on campus this time around--NO DRAFT. And therein lies the truth about the real reason for liberal anti-war sentiment. The kids demonstrating on campus in 1968 weren't really upset that babies were dying in Vietnam (as a result, they claimed, of our indiscriminate attacks). They were upset that they might get drafted and have to go fight themselves. If the liberal kids of '68 were so worried about a few hundred babies dying as a result of fighting in Vietnam, where are they now when millions of babies are dying every year in US abortion clinics. I respect a person who stands for principle. I detest a hypocrite.
Contrast the reception of Republican speakers on yankee campuses then and now with the reception Senator Edward Kennedy received on the campus of Ole Miss when he gave the commencement address at my graduation in 1978. Only 16 years previous, his big brothers had sent federal troops to Mississippi to put down a rebellion by idiots who thought they could start a second civil war over the issue of desegregation. In 1978 (and even today) the Kennedys were about as popular in Mississippi as a riled-up skunk at a church barbecue. And there were many of us in that graduating class who considered ourselves the vanguard of a conservative movement that we saw come miraculously to fruition many years earlier than we dared dream, with the election of Ronald the Great. Yet, I do not recall even one hint of disrespectful dissent from the graduates. Indeed, we sat politely and behaved because our mommas were there and we dared not embarrass them with a show of childishness, no matter how fervently we detested Mary Jo Kopechne's killer and his liberal yankee haughty disregard for Southern culture and states' rights. Now, I believe that my parents may have quietly excused themselves, along with many others, prior to Senator Kennedy's introduction, and made it back to their seats in time to see me stand for my diploma; but we graduates twitched nary a muscle.
The good liberal folks from Ted Kennedy's Boston and the rest of the North made great show of forcing their brand of desegregation on us southerners; and they were right to do so. But, more people died in anti-bussing riots in Boston a few years later than even got injured as a result of such dissent in the South. I absolutely detest a hypocrite.
Back to the subject of dissent on campus, as I wrap up this rant. To those spoiled children of idiot baby-boomers who turned their backs on and heckled Senator McCain and Secretary Rice: If you are graduates, particularly of an (ahem) esteemed ivy league school, I would think that you would have been taught how to write and express your ideas and positions in a forum more appropriate for intelligent discourse. That you chose the method of uneducated street rabble to convey your thoughts, betrays the bankruptcy of your ideas.
Grow up, open your eyes, and get a job. Good luck with that.
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