should go nicely with that "live strong" bracelet
It's been a long while since I visited Michelle Malkin's site. I should do it more often; it rarely fails to entertain. A post from two days ago is particularly good. Now, Malkin can't claim to have created this entertaining nugget of conservative apoplexy, but she is trying to push it -- so credit where it's due. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
The dispute began Monday, when the Marquette [College Republicans] student group set up a table in the Alumni Memorial Union along with signs mentioning "Adopt a Sniper," a program of the Pulaski-based non-profit Snipersonline. "Adopt a Sniper" raises money to buy special equipment for American snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan.The College Republicans were taking orders for bracelets and other trinkets provided by "Adopt a Sniper" that bore various slogans, some of them well-known in military circles. About an hour after the Republicans set up Monday morning, university officials shut them down. An appeal was denied, and the group has not been allowed to reopen the table.
What could anyone have against well-known military slogans? These young patriots are just trying to buy equipment for our troops! Not that they aren't already perfectly well-supplied, of course.
This is outrageous. Catherine, you go buy some rope at Logan hardware; Charles, warm up the car. I'll just double check on that sloga... Oh. Oh dear. That slogan? Yeah. It's "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide". Hmm. So, this wasn't so much about supporting the troops. Seems like it might have been more about celebrating the merciless slaughter of our enemies. Yeah... that doesn't sit quite as well.
Everyone knows I'm hesitant to generalize*, but in my experience most college-aged activists deserve whatever they get. Safely insulated in their echoing ivory towers, their views tend to self-exaggerate to the most cartoonish extremes possible. Among the Democrats this tends to produce epic levels of dreamy-eyed weenie-hood and an astoundingly low tolerance for debate about Israel, but nothing that can't be easily ignored. On the right, though... well, I've got plenty of Republican friends and relatives whom I deeply respect. But the politically-active college-aged Republicans I've run into have always been best described as "horrifyingly bloodthirsty". Perhaps they're just the ones who make themselves visible through stunts like this one -- although articles like this one imply otherwise. Reagrdless, I have no doubt that there are many, many principled young conservative thinkers out there. But there are also a shockingly large number of furiously angry kids.
So, sorry Michelle. If these kids were really motivated by altruism, you and I could agree on wishing them the best as they quietly went about their laudable work. But that simply isn't the case -- so please, don't act all surprised when the Marquette administration gently discourages psychopathy. It's nothing personal; it's just that it scares away the basketball recruits.
Comments
They should have left them alone, you know, free speech and all. That said, others should have the right to humiliate them, say in op-eds or whatever by publicizing the slogans in question. Shutting them down?
As to the article you reference, no different than a Dean rally.
I've never been a fan of the College Republicans because of some stunts they pulled on me and Rob when we were trying to get a conservative think tank established at FSU. (which we succeeded in creating to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year for educational events, see:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fsuics/ funded through student activity fees, to counter student agencies that existed to promote what we considered socialist programs, pro-sandinista or Castro speakers for instance..) They basically tried to sabatoge our efforts because they were shallow enough to believe that our non-partisan organization would take away from their half-assed antics on campus. My experience isn't that they're bloodthirsty, rather, they're just not too bright and/or interested in any issues that require even the slightest depth to understand/defend or argue against. So they end up doing affirmative action bake sales and sniperonline fundraisers.
But in their defence, the university is supposed to be a marketplace for ideas. I don't think Ward Churchill should be fired for his remarks about 9/11 anymore than I think a bunch of kids at a table in the student union should be closed down because someone takes offense to slogans on trinkets.
Some of the anti-israeli agitprop that I've seen approved for display by university officials comes close if not exceeds what you've quoted from the CR display.
Peace. --s
fair enough. I suppose the technical aspect allowing them to be shut down is the fact that they were selling something. To occuppy the space they did they had to complete an application process (where they were presumably intentionally vague). Given that I'm not sure it's really a first amendment issue. But aside from those specific, legalistic concerns I suppose I agree that in principle they shouldn't have been shut down.
Still fun to belittle it on the internet, though!
...and you can belittle my spelling of "defense", if you'd like.
Yes, I think this post is the appropriate response. I didn't research the issue close enough to see that there were legal requirements that had not been met by the group. That's just bad planning on their part and doesn't surprise me.
It seems like a particularly video gamer–prone fascination, too: the sniper. Isn't the sniper regarded in the military to be something of an undesirable and potentially cowardly post? Typically they're heroized in movies and lionized in multiplayer realms, but I don't think it works that way in combat.
I really think that universities ought to encourage standing satire brigades for just these sorts of situations.
That's an interesting point. I hesitate to criticize the actual job or the people doing it -- seems like a pretty horrible line of work, but of course there are plenty of horrible jobs that need doing.
But when people celebrate it or invent a culture of sniping, it seems like they're doing so for the worst reasons possible. Kriston, even with your anti-warporn stance I'm sure you'll agree that there are some positive traits brought out by warfare that we celebrate: bravery, sacrifice, valor.
But the celebration of the sniper aesthetic seems to really just be about holding the power of life or death over others while exposing ones' self to a minimum of risk. It's really a sort of grotesque caricature that lines up nicely with the worst possible interpretations of American interventionism. Not exactly something to get all rah-rah over.
I agree with you, Tom, and though I'm all neighborhood warporn watch most of the time I acknowledge all the admirable traits of our military. I was surprised to discover that snipers are shunned in military culture, and I imagine it's not something any outsider could understand.
I really imagine that the celebration of sniperhood isn't quite so thought out—my guess would be that they just seem cool from here, like the dogfighter pilots of WWI. There's probably something to the above-the-fray, life-or-death determinations that pimply dweebs admire in the sniper. Regardless, the sentiment would be better stated through care packages than publicly stating that they wish they could kill people, too.
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