IMO Coleman McCarthy is a POS.

By Colman McCarthy
Thursday, December 30, 2010

Now that asking and telling has ceased to be problematic in military circles, ROTC has resurfaced as a national issue: Will universities such as Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools be opened to Reserve Officers' Training Corps since colleges can no longer can argue that the military is biased against gays and therefore not welcome?

The debate reminds me of an interview I conducted over parents' weekend at the University of Notre Dame in 1989. I sat down with Theodore Hesburgh, the priest who had retired two years earlier after serving 35 years as the university's president. Graciously, he invited me to lunch at the campus inn. During our discussion, he took modest pride at having raised more than a billion dollars for Notre Dame, and expressed similar feelings about the university's ROTC program. More than 700 student-cadets were in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Few universities, public or private, had a larger percentage of students in uniform then. The school could have been renamed Fort Hesburgh.

When I suggested that Notre Dame's hosting of ROTC was a large negative among the school's many positives, Hesburgh disagreed. Notre Dame was a model of patriotism, he said, by training future officers who were churchgoers, who had taken courses in ethics, and who loved God and country. Notre Dame's ROTC program was a way to "Christianize the military," he stated firmly.

I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military would eventually embrace Christ's teaching of loving one's enemies?

The interview quickly slid downhill.

These days, the academic senates of the Ivies and other schools are no doubt pondering the return of military recruiters to their campuses. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, which oversees ROTC programs on more than 300 campuses, has to be asking if it wants to expand to the elite campuses, where old antipathies are remembered on both sides.

It should not be forgotten that schools have legitimate and moral reasons for keeping the military at bay, regardless of the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." They can stand with those who for reasons of conscience reject military solutions to conflicts.

They can stand with Martin Luther King Jr. and his view of America's penchant for war-making: "This madness must cease," he said from a pulpit in April 1967. Even well short of the pacifist positions, they can argue the impracticality of maintaining a military that has helped drive this country into record depths of debt. The defense budget has more than doubled since 2000, to over $700 billion. They can align themselves with colleges such as Hobart, Earlham, Goshen, Guilford, Hampshire, George Fox and a long list of others that teach alternatives to violence. Serve your country after college, these schools say, but consider the Peace Corps as well as the Marine Corps.

Will the Ivies have the courage for such stands? I'm doubtful. Only one of the eight Ivy League schools - Cornell - offers a degree in peace studies. Their pride in running programs in women's studies, black studies, and gay and lesbian studies is well-founded, but schools have small claims to greatness so long as the study of peace is not equal to the other departments when it comes to size and funding.

At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses. The many students I interviewed were candid about their reasons for signing up: free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a job in the military after college. With some exceptions, they were mainly from families that couldn't afford ever-rising college tabs.

To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In recent years, I've had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.

ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace. If a school such as Harvard does sell out to the military, let it at least be honest and add a sign at its Cambridge front portal: Harvard, a Pentagon Annex.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co...03033.html

It always comes as a bit of a shock to see pure, undiluted, 200-proof Pacifism rear its self-righteous head in the MSM. Yet, every once in a while, it does just that.

In recent years, the type of people who enforce the dominant value-system at campuses like Harvard/Yale/Columbia/etc. (viz., Elena Kagan) seized on the "DADT"-issue as a way to justify their hostility to the US Armed Forces. But, in reality, their hostility predates that particular controversy by several decades, and I predict it will outlast "DADT" by several decades, too.

Colman is a typical 1960s hippy anti-war clown. Don't get me wrong. I don't love war, I'm not a war cheerleader but I do have a problem with endless wars. However, my views on war have changed as I grew up and those views matured as I matured.

I'd like to see more of a non-interventionist movement by our government. Unless it affects us directly or an ally, stay out of it.

The budget problems will start to act to constrain our military in the near future. But notice that Colman went right to the defense budget. Bet he will never dare mention the budget increases for the favorite liberal social programs. Can't do that!

Native Georgian nailed it. A smokescreen to hide their true views. You gotta love the way these fools describe things;

"...a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing cities..."

Anybody want to bet that this guy is also anti-Christian? He plays nice at ND so that maybe he can get some ammunition for his hit piece.

Oh, and good luck with finding a job with a "peace studies" degree!!

Has anyone stopped to ask these idiots what their true motivation was for forbidding the ROTC? Now that DADT has been repealed, and they still oppose, it should be quite obvious.

GDamn anti-American, anti-defense mofuggas. USSR's military? Cool. Ours? Imperialist.

Democrats (read Communists) make me f'n sick.

If a private school doesn't want them, then so be it. There are plenty of great universities in this nation that do the right thing and have ROTC if that is what you want to do in college.

(12-31-2010 10:58 AM)WMD Owl Wrote:  At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses.

WTF, they're not suppose to be hard courses. Its called training. I don't know what the other branches do, but we took navigation (2 semesters), leadership ethics (2 semesters), naval history, and systems and engineering (2 semesters). But don't pay any attention to the requirement that Mids also take 2 semesters of both calculus and calculus-based physics. I'm sorry our courses weren't harder like your dyke studies or peace studies.

But I'll give you peace studies in two easy steps (save you about $40,000): step 1) remove pants, step 2) touch toes.

Quote: I admire those who join armies, whether America's or the Taliban's: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home.

Wait, I didn't know I joined an organization who's job it is to execute women who show their skin in public, try to attend school, work, or just leave the home unescorted? That definitely wasn't on my commission paperwork...

**** this *****. I have no time to waste for people who don't have a clue what they're talking about.

(01-01-2011 12:37 AM)T-Monay820 Wrote:  WTF, they're not suppose to be hard courses. Its called training. I don't know what the other branches do, but we took navigation (2 semesters), leadership ethics (2 semesters), naval history, and systems and engineering (2 semesters). But don't pay any attention to the requirement that Mids also take 2 semesters of both calculus and calculus-based physics. I'm sorry our courses weren't harder like your dyke studies or peace studies.

No kidding. Physics 101 and 102 took up most of time during my Freshman Year at Rice and Naval Science 102 (Shipboard Engineering Systems, Stability, Damage Control) wasn't a cakewalk either.