- Recently on the Rense site a story was covered about
Professor Peter Kirstein of Saint Xavier University in Chicago, presently
the object of a suspiciously incited mob's "torches and pitchforks"
concerning the expression of his personal (if educated!) views on our military.
The opinions expressed most opposite to my own regarding this unjustified
academic lynching can be found here:
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- http://www.sftt.org/article11082002a.html
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- I'm a retired Army officer and combat veteran, with a
bronze star and four Meritorious Service Medals, and I think this reflexive
firestorm on the reputation of Professor Peter Kirstein, the history Professor
"punished" for his "Anti-Military Opinion", is without
merit, a graceless institutional overreaction, and descriptive of an America
as sick as the professor believes it is. The reactionary arguments of the
professor's obviously conflicted detractors are most poignantly outlined
by Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC, (from the aforementioned link) and
are as follows:
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- "It is the soldier, not the reporter who has given
us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given
us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
who gives us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes
the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the
flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag."
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- The preceding, frankly, is overemotional and sensationalistic
nonsense and a weepy justification for a continued ignorance OF (and disrespect
FOR!) the rest of the world. Additionally, it is just plain garden variety
wrong... wrong in spirit, wrong in letter, and wrong in fact.
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- IT IS THE REPORTER, not the soldier, who produces the
*reality* of a free press. To often that soldier has had his rifle in
the reporter's MOUTH or where is the quality raw reportage from the last
Gulf "police action" and a recent *conflict* in Afghanistan?
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- IT IS THE POET, not the soldier, who first suggested,
identified, and articulated the freedom of speech, or we'd (all of us)
still be tilling a three field rotation for the manor lord and providing
our daughters for the sport of his arrogant sons!
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- IT IS THE CAMPUS ORGANIZER, not the soldier who dares
to bravely demonstrate in the first place despite the soldier sent there
to shoot him down like a dog, or has everyone just forgotten Kent State!
I've saluted the flag. I've served, very honorably, beneath the flag.
Tragically, I missed the "opportunity" to be killed in (suspicious!)
combat, or I would have been swaddled with it in death! And as to soldiers
allowing protesters to burn the flag (?) -- that's just plain old neighborhood
unvarnished ludicrousness and opulent (but flatulent) political jingoism!
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- The padre's pontifications pound patriotic sand!
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- At the root of this convenient donnybrook is a private
communication between two people that should never have seen the light
of day -- much less the frenzied attention of the reactionary Nation!
Moreover, it was the little ROTC 'weasel' that ratted the private communication
of the professor OUT who is the real problem here, not an honorable man
expressing himself (as he will!) in an allegedly *free* society!
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- Had the professor known a freaking MICROPHONE was on...
I'm sure he would have couched his RIGHTFUL refusal to participate in more
eloquent and thoughtful terms -- used a more pedantic tone to educate what
he apparently saw as an ignorant and insentient little military drone!
The professor is a pacifist with strong, highly educated, views on a subject
of suspicious military violence repeating itself over and over again in
our western civilization for the same stupid, arbitrary, and sociopathic
reasons, and incurring the wrath of the whole REST of the word against
us in the artless process!
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- Finally, America, the Rome of the 21st Century, is BEST
served by ardent criticism and is done a HUGE disservice by thoughtless
adulation! Did the Rome of antiquity survive thoughtless adulation, and
where came the criticism of it at the end after the reporters, poets, and
organizers were exiled or hacked up in the distracting arena!
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- Reinstate Professor Peter Kirstein and remove his academic
shackles, now! He's what _I_ was fighting for!
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- Lehmberg@snowhill.com
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- EXPLORE "AlienViews" at: http://www.alienview.net
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- "I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite.
What others see from afar, I leave _far_ behind me." - Giordano Bruno,
scourged by the scabrously specious scurrilous.
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