Friday, February 17, 2006

For shame

So much for the greatest generation.

I wish there was some way we could these little parasites off from one single dime of federal money.

The University of Washington declines to honour former student and WWII flying ace Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. Among those who opposed:

Jill Edwards questioned whether it was appropriate to honor a person who killed other people.

Over in Canada, plans proceed to honour draft dodgers with a creepy hippie statue:

The proposal calls for a sculpture of two Americans, a male and a female, crossing an imaginary border where a Canadian figure is waiting to welcome them.

As Clear and Present Danger reports: “They’re so liberal they even felt they had to create a female draft dodger.”


via Tim Blair

You can read a synopsis on Col. Boyington's exploits here.

UPDATE:

The Lt. Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington Memorial Scholarship Fund. scholarships . This is a scholarship fund for Marines or the children of Marines.

18 comments:

truepeers said...

After chasing links, here is the root of the draft dodger story

I would only add that when the statue was originally proposed, a lot of people in Nelson, BC opposed it, and not simply because it would be bad for the tourism business. A lot of people don't like dogers and Hippies (it's Nelson, after all), for reasons you can guess. And the new proposal seems to be similarly marginal. Curious how the left needs to monumentalize itself.

buddy larsen said...

Fox interviewed some of the anti-Boyington students. I came near wanting to join al Quaida.

Had to go look at the plane to regain my balance. Here's a nice article--good pix--on Boyington's aircraft, the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair.

buddy larsen said...

One wonders why it was that someone like Churchill could understand what was happening in the 30s, and yet others seeing the same facts could not.

buddy larsen said...

That's pretty much how the cow ate the corn corn, Peter.

Implicit in your analysis is that these kids haven't bothered to remedy their ignorance (as a remedy for being stuck in time and space, we have developed reading and writing) because they do not believe that their ignorance exists.

Another unintended consequence of the self-esteem movement.

Old Biblical wisdom that "the wages of sin is death" might well also mean that deliberately avoiding the knowledge that something is trying to kill you, is a sin.

In which case, to live large and smug inside some high-minded fantasy world would be a sin, and not if but when innocent blood flows as a result, then the sin is abominable.

buddy larsen said...

Not to mention the fact that you know and I know that if Lt Col Boyington was still with us, these little saints-on-the-cheap wouldn't dare smear his name. It's the 'safe principle' doctrine.

Specter said...

It is just more of how the left is controlling academia.

But it was funny - the other day there was a person trashing our current soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan (not sure if it was here or another blog). The person commented that the kids of "rich a$$ republicans" don't go to war and their parents just stay home and track their bank accounts. The funny thing was when someone asked them why the soldiers that do volunteer end up voting overwhelmingly Republican. The original poster couldn't, or wouldn't answer that. I guess there is some hope for the next generations....

buddy larsen said...

It's another of the left's 'tells' that since it's all about jealousy and envy in their minds, it must be the same in everybody elses's mind, too. We already have a massively progressive income tax, what else can we do, and still keep opportunity alive?

buddy larsen said...

Daniel Henninger in WSJ:

"...collaborating with a willing media to market the opposition party as a haunted house is a cynical, wholly reductionist strategy, with nothing in it for the public good. It dumbs down our politics. As shown with Social Security reform, the system ceases to function. A major U.S. foreign-policy initiative like the Bush Doctrine has to be delegitimized with no serious opposition support at any level. This is the strategy of the phalanx, not politics. If it works, the other side will surely run the same tar-and-pitch strategy against a new Clinton presidency. It deserves to fail."

buddy larsen said...

Should've mentioned that the purpose of the essay is to answer the question of why the Dems seem to keep taking the bait and shooting themselves in the foot, with one baseless accusation after another. DH says (and I agree) it's part of a coherent strategy. He doesn't use the words, but it is the strategy of "Rule or Ruin". And they mean it, too.

buddy larsen said...

Henninger's thesis is that the target is the "swing voter".

The Dems and their MSM have nothing to offer, so they are trying to make that into something worth voting for. How would one go about doing this? By going over-the-top on every single thing the administration is remotely connected with.

As Henninger says, the fate of the nation, or the world, is simply not one of their concerns.

They're saying, either we put them back in control, or they will do their best to burn the place down.

buddy larsen said...

It's the 'extortionist strategy'.

buddy larsen said...

Peter, if you guys would just take Massachusetts back, it would help immensely.

buddy larsen said...

..and "Dooyoo Knowhoo Iyam" Mustafa Ben Amistake Kaherri.

buddy larsen said...

Wasn't it Cambodian CIA agents that were so seared seared?

But it could well have been Mongols, too.

Heck, it could even have been Jenjis Khan (the Jewish Mongol), had he gone a little further up the headwaters of the River of Time, that fantastic starlit Christmas Eve.

buddy larsen said...

Ah yes, Jenjis Khan's little bagel shoppe, with the little hand-lettered sign in the window,

"no shoes, no shirt, no service, plus we personally rape, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals, cut off limbs, blow up bodies, randomly shoot civilians, raze villages in the fashion reminiscent of me, shopkeeper Jenjis Khan, shoot cattle and dogs for fun, poison food stocks, and generally ravage the country side. Also, everyday special price, half-off on day-old bagels."

buddy larsen said...

Oy, and then Mustafa Ben Amistake al Sheikdown left with the fleet, and sailed back cross the Bounding Main to grace central America with his Less Majestique:

"As Kerry was reassuring his colleagues that Ortega wouldn't establish Soviet and Cuban bases in Nicaragua, Ortega (a few days after he met with Kerry) was flying to Moscow to arrange a $200 million transfer of Soviet monies to Nicaragua. Kerry's sales pitch for the Sandinistas -- "I see an enormous haughtiness in the United States trying to tell them what to do. Our economic squeeze on them is very sad. The whole population is suffering" -- worked in Congress. It voted against aid to the Contras, even as Ortega was collecting aid from his Soviet bosses."

buddy larsen said...

Oh, eating donkeys is a popular pastime in many rough places around the globe.

buddy larsen said...

Lt Col Boyington's memorial was voted down by 45 members of the student council--not just the several quoted saying things like 'no need for another monument to rich white men' (Boyington BTW was a Sioux Indian and born poor, and stayed that way), and things like 'Marines are not what this university should be honoring' (Boyington was an American Volunteer Group "Flying Tiger" fighting in China before USA entered the war, fought thru the dark days when victory was up for grabs, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, recorded 28 enemy aircraft destroyed, was shot down in air combat, and spent nearly two years in an enemy POW camp).

Fine, don't honor a Marine, don't honor a WWII hero or a Sioux warrior, but could ya maybe, maybe, honor one of your Engineering graduates who actually made real-life sacrifices, during a national crisis, in support of your own campus freedom of speech?