Seeing the enemy where they're not - A group founded by Lynne Cheney hunts for traitors and finds them at the ivory tower

For most of the 1990s, conservatives made a habit of exposing instances of "political correctness gone awry." Usually, a conservative would make an unpopular statement on an issue such as affirmative action or reparations for slavery, most likely on a college campus or in a college town such as Berkeley, California, after which he or she would be berated by the community for his or her alleged insensitivity or racism. Often, newspapers got confiscated and offices picketed.

Conservative commentators and radio talk show hosts, always happy to play the victim of liberal groups that themselves played the victim, gave a great deal of air time and column space to these alleged First Amendment infringements. If liberals were so sure of the superiority of their argument on a given issue, so the conservatives said, why were they always trying to keep people who opposed their views from expressing themselves?

Of course, this sort of thing almost always took place in environments where the those agreeing with the attacked conservative were a very small minority. Nowadays, conservatives find themselves articulating the position of the vast majority of Americans on military issues. Having been punished for their views for so long, do you think they would have learned from their campus persecution and encouraged the free and open debate of ideas that they were denied on many race issues for so long?

Of course not.

One must expect hypocrisy from the same people who claim that the war justifies a suspension of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments but not Bayer's patent on the anti-anthrax drug Cipro.

Now that a hawkish policy is supported by a large majority of the population, conservatives have become just as vigorous in attacking liberals who depart even slightly from the Bush administration line.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is a report from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), an organization whose founders include failed romance novelist and second lady Lynne V. Cheney. The report is entitled "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It."

In the opening paragraph of the report, a dire picture is painted. America is united behind a military response, but, "Not so in academe . professors across the country sponsored teach-ins that typically ranged from moral equivocation to explicit condemnations of America."

So, what were these anti-American professors saying? The ACTA report gives 100 examples.

"As we think about [punishing those responsible], it's very important for Americans to think about our own history, what we did in World War II to Japanese citizens." Are these the words of a traitor or those of a concerned citizen who would rather we respond to the terrorist threat in a way consistent with our values?

How about these words, obviously from a traitor: "[We should] build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls."

A professor of religious studies at Pomona College said, "We have to learn to use courage for peace instead of war." Is attacking this statement really the defending civilization? Besides, the report gives no hint as to the context in which this was said.

According to Cheney and her partners-in-arms at ACTA, Ghandi is a threat to America and civilization. Quote 33 is from a sign at a protest rally that said "An eye for an eye leaves the world blind." Perhaps Ghandi was right when he said that western civilization was "a good idea."

Of course, some of the quotes were derived from the long-standing academic tradition of occasionally trotting out the same tired, discredited Marxist drivel about oppressive capitalist overlords that students haven't given serious credence to for decades. This can be excused - at least they're consistent, even if they're ignored.

Still, most of the quotes in the ACTA report are innocuous. They only represent a "threat" to conservatives because they encourage thinking independently from the White House line, if only marginally. ACTA is behaving as a self-appointed enforcer of the Bush administration's policies, which puts it in the absurd position. of attacking people who dare to say that, ceteris paribus, peace is preferable to war, that America should obey the human rights it attacks other countries for violating and that giving arms to radical groups to fight the communists might have had unforeseen, negative consequences.

Cheney, ACTA and the Bush administration should be glad that the current military action in Afghanistan is so widely approved of and ought not worry about professors discussing moral ambiguities that America's most powerful C student does not.