Monday, May 22, 2006

Nothing More Insufferable Than a Moralizing Scold

John McCain's speech at New School University on Friday met with amusingly predictable derision from the homogeneously leftist student body at that storied institution. Details are available here.

In sum, McCain got a scolding from a student speaker, who announced that she had attained sufficient wisdom in her four years as an undergraduate to lecture a man who has served as a Navy pilot, suffered torture as a prisoner of war, and served three terms in the House of Representatives and is in his fourth in the Senate. And students in the audience did the usual booking, hissing, turning backwards, and holding up of clever signs.

One mass produced sign said, "McCain does not speak for me." We recommend in response that New School assess its students' command of English grammar. It is patently obvious that McCain was not there to speak for the students. Student speakers did that. McCain was there to speak to the students. And if their signs meant that they were choosing to ignore McCain, the signs should have read to.

Or it may be, as the student speaker's address might indicate, that after four years of the radically leftist model of education pursued at New School (motto: "For people who think that Columbia University is conservative, or whose scores weren't good enough to get in there"), the university's graduates may think that education consists not of listening to people with significant experiences and accumulated wisdom but speaking one's own mind and hearing others speak it back. Anyone who speaks must therefore speak for the listener or not speak at all.

At any rate, McCain can use this episode as a conservative bona fide: he's now officially an anti-gay, anti-abortion radical, and he has the videotape to prove it.

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