CHILDREN SHOULD BE SEEN AND NOT HEARD :

The Rough Beast Returns (Todd Gitlin, June 17, 2002, Mother Jones)

Wicked anti-Semitism is back. The worst crackpot notions that circulate through the violent Middle East are also roaming around America, and if that wasn't bad enough, students are spreading the gibberish. Students! As if the bloc to which we have long looked for intelligent dissent has decided to junk any pretense of standards.

A student movement is not just a student movement. It's a student movement. Students, whether they are progressive or not, have the responsibility of knowing things, of thinking and discerning, of studying. A student movement should maintain the highest of standards, not ape the formulas of its elders or outdo them in virulence.

It should therefore trouble progressives everywhere that the students at San Francisco State are neither curious nor revolted by the anti-Semitic drivel they are regurgitating. The simple fact that a student movement -- even a small one -- has been reduced to reflecting the hatred spewed by others should profoundly trouble anyone whose moral principles aim higher than simple nationalism -- as should be the case for anyone on the left.

As a leader of the Left since the 1960s, few people have spoken more nonsense over the last forty years than Todd Gitlin, but this may take the cake. The notion that this most recent wave of anti-semitism represents any kind of departure from the typical self-centered, uninformed silliness that professor-influenced students usually spew is completely ridiculous. In what way does their stupidity today differ from the stupidity that students were convinced of in the 60s and which Maureen Dowd celebrates even today in her column? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 26, 2002 11:48 AM