Lost Youth

I've mentioned a couple of times now the disgraceful response from the student senate at the University of Washington over a proposed memorial for WWII ace Pappy Boyington. One senator said ""didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce." Another said "many monuments at UW already commemorate rich white men." (Boyington was not rich, and was partly of Native American ancestry.) Another future leader shudder said ""the resolution should commend Colonel Boyington's service, not his killing of others."

In a comment in my post on Iwo Jima, C-Low shared this quote from the Officers Club blog:

"For those who confuse moral relativism for wisdom, who travel to foreign lands to undermine this campaign against terror, who compare American troops to our enemies, Franklin Roosevelt answers with a sharp reply: "As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed...The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example.""

Another comment in that post said this:

I think President Regan said it best: "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again."

The same kind of lefty lunacy that has infected the student senate at the UW is alive and well here at the University of Minnesota as well.

An editorial in the Minnesota Daily, the campus paper of the U of M, addressed the Midwest Heroes ads. The editorial is another example of how those who have been given everything, and earned nothing, and who "confuse moral relativism for wisdom" become strangers to truth, and the principles that propelled this country to the greatest nation the world has known. The editorial was entitled Propaganda in the heartland.

In a principled and just stand, the Minnesota ABC affiliate KSTP refused to air the controversial commercial known as "Midwest Heroes" because it thought the ad unfairly was misleading citizens about the media and the progress in Iraq.

Kudos to KSTP for rightly choosing to not air the ad; other stations should follow suit. More than misleading, the commercial is a downright lie and nothing more than laundered propaganda for the Bush administration.

The pro-war ad recalls the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, with testimonials from soldiers who state the necessity of fighting terrorists in Iraq rather than in the heartland. They also state that much progress is being made in Iraq and lament the incorrect picture the media convey about the war. The ad gets instant credibility from some viewers because it supposedly features real families from the Midwest that have a military connection in Iraq, but when taking a closer look the ad is nowhere near authentic.

The ad was produced by the conservative advocacy group Progress for America Voter Fund, which is a national tax-exempt 527 organization closely linked to the Bush administration. The ads that for now are airing only in Minnesota supposedly feature Midwest families, but half of them are from Oregon. One woman, who is labeled as the mother of a fallen soldier, talks about finishing the job in Iraq for her son, but in reality she is the stepmother of the fallen soldier - the real mother is against the war because she believes her son died for a lie.

This manufactured propaganda once again showcases the Bush administration's utter contempt for real democracy and the level it will sink to to sell their failing policies. It is interesting to note that according to a congressional analysis, the Bush administration has spent more than $250 million from taxpayers on "public relations"; contracts during its first term, compared to the Clinton administration spent, which spent $128 million over the span of two terms.

I suppose it's cute when kids try to imitate their elders, but when the kids at the Minnesota Daily use their toy paper to emulate elders in the media like Nick Coleman, it's no longer cute, but dangerous. Folks like these graduate into the mainstream media, and is it any mystery, then, where the MSM's bias comes from.

These embryonic leftys make no pretense about "supporting the troops." They don't. Nor are they patriots. Is the first instinct of a patriot to call ads supporting the troops a "downright lie" and "laundered propaganda?"

Despite the smear, it isn't until the fourth paragraph do the editors come up with something they apparently think is a "lie." Again, they're simply parroting something they see their elders like Coleman saying, but their charge is a false one.

The editorial says "One woman, who is labeled as the mother of a fallen soldier." You can watch the second ad for yourself here. The woman in question, M.J. Kesterson, is not labelled as the mother of Erik Kesterson.

In the bio for the Kestersons, it does say this:

M.J. and Clay's son, Chief Warrant Officer Erik Kesterson, to the right with M.J., was killed in Iraq.

Power Line addressed the issue here.

Col. Repya's letter refers to Coleman's attack on the second Progress for America ad for presenting M.J. Kesterson in a context that would cause viewers to conclude she was Erik Kesterson's mother when she was in fact his stepmother. From an interview with Bill O'Reilly, it appears that Erik "for the most part" lived with and was raised by his father and M.J. Kesterson. Erik Kesterson's mother Dolores is an opponent of the war in the mold of Cindy Sheehan.

Anti-Strib addresses the stepmother issue here:

Here is my problem with this. Nick, do you have any idea how many step parents there are in this state right now? Do you know how many read your publication? It is unbelievably offensive for you to simply dismiss those step-parents out there that spend their lives being a parent to their spouses children. Oh, I realize that in this crazy game of political he said/she said, no rules apply to Nick or his lefty crusaders. But this is out of bounds on so many levels.

Yes, I understand Erik's real mom doesn't agree with the Iraq war and is opposed to our current administration. I feel bad for her and any other parent who has lost someone in this war. But to dismiss M.J. simply on the basis of political reasons is really very disgusting Nick, even for you. She also lost a step-son Nick. She spoke out in the ad to show support to Erik and every other troop defending freedom. Is her loss any less because she's only a "step-mom"?

I'm a conservative and my wife, the Bodacious Mrs. W, is a step-mom to my kids. Do political differences make her role as a step-mom any less important, or does your ridicule of step-moms only apply to those who support the war and tear down your short sighted and biased media reports of doom and gloom?

Face it Nick, you and your pals at Daily Kos are desperate. This attack proves it. You're so hell bent on making everyone believe that things are so awful that you'll attack a step-mom and downplay her role in her dead step-sons life...all for politically biased reasons. That, my friend, is IRRESPONSIBLE.

Mitch Berg adds this:

Nick: Did you ask [PiPress columnist] Laura Billings about what being a step-parent means?

You know - your own childrens' stepmother?

Or any step-parent?

I've been one, Nick. I've helped raise someone else's son. Do you think there's any less involvement in time, effort and love? Oh, it's different than having your own (and I have a couple of them, too), but you still care about them deeply, and worry about them intensely when they go off into the world.

This vindicative smear of step parents is what the Minnesota Daily has also signed on to.

In the third paragraph of the editorial, the editors bring up what I guess they think is something misleading about the ads. They write: "The ads that for now are airing only in Minnesota supposedly feature Midwest families, but half of them are from Oregon."

Again, nowhere do the ads say that the families featured in the ads are Minnesota born and bred.

I suppose it is too much to expect college students to read, but the Midwest Heroes doesn't hide what they hope to do, and who is involved.

The ads are produced by the Progress for America Voter fund, a conservative advocacy group.

From the Midwest Heroes website, you'll find that Merrilee Carlson, who appears in the second ad, is the chair of Minnesota Families United. This is a state chapter of a national organization called Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission, a not-for-profit 501(c)(4) organization.

I don't know the precise history behind the ads, but surely the Minnesota chapter got involved in making these ads, and through contacts with other state organizations involved some Oregon families.

In this, the kids at the U of M find reason to call the ads a lie, and propaganda.

Such hate does not spontaneously combust. It is taught and modeled. I have long thought that one reason that liberalism has such a firm hold on universities is that the people there are not responsible for real-world concerns. The students are most likely not paying for the bulk of their education, don't work full time. In the campus setting they don't have to make their meals, they don't clean their bathrooms, in short, everything is done for them. They are free to study, and don't have to produce anything of value.

Same goes for the faculty. The tenure system protects them from the marketplace, and they don't have to produce something the market wants in order to make a living. (The pressure to publish is another matter. That system arises out of a need to justify the fact they don't compete in a market.)

And so, we end up with kids who don't know where we've come from. They become Leftys who think money grows on trees, and who don't believe enemies exist, and if they do, it's because America did something wrong.

They are not being taught the lessons of history by their teachers, because their teachers are hateful leftys who don't believe in America either. They surely don't believe in defending America from her enemies.

In a comment in a post over at Shot in the Dark, an apparently left-leaning commenter said this of the misguided youth at the UW:

It's a bunch of 19-year-olds. They're supposed to be stupid. You right-wingers really need to relax. Have a couple drinks and shoot somebody in the face. That always seems to cheer you guys up.

The problem is the 19 year olds don't learn. At what point will they pick up a book and suddenly discover the cost and sacrifice that bought them their way of life? It doesn't happen. They continue on in their cocoon, reinforced at every turn by Lefty pablum, and they grow into the nutters that worship Cindy Sheehan, and nod their heads at statements like "Bush is the world's biggest terrorist."

Parents, don't expect society to teach our children right and wrong, and the value of the treasures we have in America. Don't expect society to reinforce the need to honor those who have sacrificed for us. We need to do that ourselves. It's our job. Somewhere along the line, someone has failed to teach these sorry students.

See also:

They are us, yet they are better than we will ever be
Indeed they are Americans
The face of the Left