On April 1, 1944, the Yale News Digest published an report titled “World War II: 14,491 Yale Graduates Now Serving. Casualties: 218.” Times have changed and so has Yale, but liberals, conservatives and independents remain dedicated to serving others, including the nation.
Years ago Yalies said, with full seriousness, “For God, for Country and for Yale.” It’s time to revisit that commitment (to) country to the forefront of Yale’s consciousness.
My, how times have changed.
Want to hear the high regard our leftie betters have for the military?
While I was at Yale an undergraduate in a class where I served as a teaching fellow said to me, “Why are my taxpayer dollars ‘wasted sending you here, you are just a soldier.’ ”
An Ivy League student said that--before our current wars, and when Clinton was President. Can't pin his view on President Bush.
The author supports the return of ROTC to Yale, and I can't argue with his logic:
I don’t see ROTC as some lock step stepping stone as this e-mail suggests. Yale students don’t herd toward anything they don’t support. I suggest a simple free-market scenario. What I advocate is giving them that choice, not drafting them to sign up for ROTC. Universities are intellectual buffets of ideas, so why not add some diversity to that buffet?
I'm all about diversity.
I hope we can return to the days when the military was seen as an honorable calling by a large cross-section of society, and not just primarily by those of a conservative political bent. As the author said, it's a volunteer military run by our elected civilian government, "not some fringe militia with its own agenda."
One of the comments left in reply to the article stated:
ReplyDelete"As I recall, Yale and other universities withdrew from ROTC in the 1960s because having faculty appointed by an external group, and allowing such faculty to create credit courses without the oversight of standard university curriculum committees was inconsistent with academic integrity. Since the military refused to change those policies then, it was impossible to allow ROTC to continue on campus. Is there any reason to believe that those policies would be changed now?I’m old enough to remember when conservatives warned of the dangers to universities of accepting federal funds (though at the time the object of the warning was grant funding). Clearly the warning was not entirely foolish with regard to military funding."
This seems to have some validity if it was indeed the reason for taking away the ROTC. I don't know how much of a smokescreen this reason might be though for just getting rid of the ROTC based on political bias.
A later comment debunked that one.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I remember reading in Rethinking Our Classrooms that JROTC has been taken out of public high schools because it violates the principle of gender equality by being for boys only. And that NCLB nullified that regulation. Yet, there was a JROTC at my high school before NCLB was passed, so I'm not sure that's true. Though I doubt that would apply to college-level ROTC programs.
ReplyDeleteJROTC for boys only? Never heard that one--although it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that the Rethinking Schools people would lie.
ReplyDeleteNot Bush's fault? You need to get with the program, Darren. You and I both know that the liberal is a superior being, more evolved than we mere conservatives. It is therefore clear that their objections to ROTC and the military were based upon their psychic precognition of the impending Bush administration!
ReplyDeleteNow that we have seen what can happen when a credit bubble bursts, I wonder if the liberals are ready for seeing a creditability bubble explode as well. I don't think many of Obama's supporters really believed he would implement his socialist goals. I wonder which of the high paid celebrities would be willing to answer how they got to the Inaugural? At some point people will stop worshiping folks that are in the media and start demanding some answers.
ReplyDelete