Sunday, September 22, 2013

Another Difference between Academics in Africa and those in Obrunistan

It seems to be coming a regular occurrence that some radical left wing professor in the US will kick up a storm of controversy by advocating violence against members of the NRA or their families. First there was Dr. Loomis demanding that Wayne LaPierre be arrested, tried as a terrorist, and imprisoned for life. Now Professor Guth has publicly stated that he thinks that the children of NRA members should be killed as some sort of divinely sanctioned revenge. Personally, I don't care about gun control either way. I currently live in a country where gun ownership is restricted to the military and police, and private possession of a handgun is a serious crime. I don't have a problem with that. When I last lived in the US I lived in a small town, Arivaca Arizona, where a large percentage of the population had guns and many of them wore them into town to drink coffee at the Gadsden Cafe or shop at the Mercantile. Neither the prohibition on firearm ownership in Ghana or the open carrying in Arivaca bothers me one way or the other. But, the wishing of violence including state violence in the form of incarceration upon political opponents does bother me. Because the violent revolutionary rhetoric about incarcerating or killing political opponents by US professors reminds me of similar rhetoric by radical leftists elsewhere. Radical leftists who unlike Loomis and Guth so far who did not stop at mere rhetoric, but put their words into actions. The history of the Left using state power to imprison and kill its political enemies in the USSR, China, Cambodia and elsewhere is of course well documented even if still seriously downplayed by US academia. However, I find the closest parallel to Guth's recent outburst to be in a country where the Left came very close to taking power, but was fortunately ultimately defeated. Abimael Guzman was a professor of philosophy in Peru and the founder of the radical Maoist terrorist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) responsible for murdering thousands of people during the 1980s. Most of his victims were peasants who disagreed with his vision of violently restructuring the Peruvian countryside along the lines of the Great Leap Forward in China. Why does the hard core Left that dominates American academia feel that it is necessary not just to disagree and condemn the policies of the NRA, but to advocate repression and violence against its members and their families? After all I don't think Loomis or Guth should go to prison or have their families killed just because I disagree with them.

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