Letters

I’ve been pondering how to live with both the geopoltical reality of the conflict in Israel over the war to exterminate a virulent terrorist organization, Hamas, and the upwelling of campus unrest in New York City and the nation at large.

They are distinctly different. The one happening in Gaza is real in its life-and-death implications as we witness Israel respond to its existential threat. The other is nauseating performance art depicting outrage from America’s most privileged sons and daughters.

In Israel, Americans are still held hostage since last October 7, and what have we done to get them back? Israel has mobilized its entire country to face an enemy that makes no excuse for its ethnic hatred of Jews and in its fanaticism will sacrifice as many Palestinians as it will take to accomplish its purpose. That is as real as it gets in commitment to ideas.

Here, on our university campuses, we are compelled to pay attention to students co-dependent on their addiction to the melodrama they have created to validate their narcissistic lives. One wonders what will they do when the semester ends?

On a more serious note, these demonstrations are a symptom of the intellectual effort underway by the Left to discredit Western civilization.

The foundation belief of these make-believe radicals is that the accomplishments of Western scholarship in the sciences, math, literature and the philosophy of limited government that produced free speech, equality and human rights must be canceled. This suicidal self-loathing breeds anti-American followers, who, as they condemn the West as anti-settler, colonial oppressors, enjoy the most prosperous time in human history, while ignoring the irony that they require open borders to bring more potential “victims” to this land of oppression. A delicious contradiction if it weren’t so destructive to the fabric of a cohesive society.

But where does this hatred of the Jews fit in? If Israelis are oppressors in their eyes then Jews are to be hated. If Jews are the oppressors, people of color should hate them as well. See how this ties together? Progressives here live in a bubble of victimhood.

But our naive young progressives are blind to the inequity and intolerance of the oppressed (Hamas) they so lovingly embrace. How long would a trans/gay lifestyle survive in the Muslim brotherhood?

Our universities are sick. Their faculties do not acknowledge the truth that the wonders of equality, human rights, limited government and tolerance did not come out of Africa, India, China or the Middle East. Their student demonstrators only want death to America after it pays off their student loans.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton