Jolly Roger

Higher Education

My girlfriend goes to Kent State University, in Ohio. Long before the invasion of Iraq, before anyone had ever heard of Abu Ghraib prison, I had looked at one of her English assignments. She was to write an essay discussing the ethics of torture, and especially if it were justified in cases where a terrorist might have information that could save lives.

At the time no one in America had considered torture as anything but crude and barbaric, with the possible exception of a few CIA experts who knew it mainly as ineffective. By asking this question on torture, which our entire society had answered long ago, I realized that Kent State University, or one crazy English professor, was trying to suggest that there are times when torture is justified, even though we had always known differently. Torture was so universally unacceptable to people of our culture, that it didn’t even have to be discussed, until now. I ignored it as another facet of terror-hysteria, and didn’t think about it again until the photos from Abu Ghraib were unleashed on the internet.

Several months ago, she told me that she disagreed with her professor, who insisted it was "anti-social behavior" to want privacy in your home, and your door to be closed to strangers. I’m glad she disagreed, but as she relayed more of the discussion, I realized that the professor’s goal was to instill a way of thinking that would make the need for search warrants seem silly.

Two days ago she told me for the first time that she supports the war in Iraq, because "we need the oil." Then she went on to explain how dependent we are on the substance, as if I would have been surprised to learn such a thing.

I began to have a real problem with this, because apparently my girlfriend of six years feels the Iraqi horrors are justified by her desire to drive around in her car. I called her the following day to tell her that I found this disturbing. This is when she tried to explain to me that the "new world order is a good thing," and she hasn’t even taken any classes devoted to politics or government. I screamed. I had always thought I that knew where she stood on these issues, and these new revelations shocked me. I felt as if I were living through the "invasion of the body snatchers," and someone had switched her.

No single anecdote from her schooling is disturbing by itself, but when taken together, along with the apparent change in her political views, they paint a scary picture, and that picture should also contain the recent protests of professors over the lack of academic freedom. It seems as if the curriculum at Kent State University, and probably new professors too, have been adapted to insure that the new "intelligentsia" welcomes the new world order with a smile. My limited experience with this phenomenon only relates to my girlfriend, and KSU, but since American colleges and universities were the womb of all dissent in the 1960's, and the professors are protesting for academic freedom, I would assume that a lid has been placed on free thinking at all of them.

Full-time students need to devote almost all their free time to studying what they’ll be tested on if they expect to pass, so I would assume that very few of today’s highly pressured students reads anything that’s not part of the program. It’s a system that insures that once they graduate and "know everything," they’ll know little other than what their school faculty wants them to know, and their opinions will have been shaped to suit our new fascist society. The lack of academic freedom, and the fact that the survival of most colleges and universities is dependent upon endowments from large corporations completes the story. The corporations control higher education too, and to make sure everything runs smoothly, the leaders of tomorrow are being brainwashed today. — Jolly Roger

"Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political
education" ---- Henry Brooks Adams

P.S. – C-span covers 9-11 truth

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Anything written by "Jolly Roger" is the property of the resistance movement, and the author hereby gives permission
to anyone who so desires to post, copy, print, distribute, or forward this letter as they see fit. – JR

± ???? 911 Silence