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November 20, 2006
Talking back to the Communist Party
This was a comment on my experience at the Rachel Corrie "talkback." How things have changed.
You have reminded me of an event over 40 years ago at Trinity College, Hartford. All of the top leadership of the Communist Party USA visited the campus and gave talks on the wonderful future that awaited us all when the Communist Party had taken over and the state had been allowed to wither away.
This was before the protest era. Nobody waved signs, nobody shouted slogans, everybody in the lecture hall listened attentively.
A question-and-answer period began when the set speeches were over. It quickly became apparent that the entire Political Science Department -professors and students - had come to this event. They all had questions, and their questions probed every faulty piece of logic in the Communist arguments The questions were backed by solid examples from real-world Communist take-overs. Non-answers didn't work; the next person called on would generally ask the same question with somewhat different wording, or ask for "a few more details" or "a clarification" of the non-answer, pointing out that it had been a non-answer. By the end of the session, the Party leaders had been reduced to total incoherence. It was one of the most devastating intellectual put-downs that I have ever witnessed.
Once upon a time, college and university political science departements were not all left-liberal. Once upon a time, discussions there were based on thinking, not on emotion. Someday, maybe, the USA will fully recover from Vietnam. But it hasn't happened yet.
I was there as a gofer for the college radio station, which tape-recorded the entire event. I wonder if a copy of that tape still exists.
Thanks to "Prof. Willard" for sharing that reminder with us. Contrast with the sudden cancellation of Nonie Darwish's appearance at Brown, last week.
Judith | 11/20/06 at 10:40 PM | Categories: - Wackademia
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Forty years ago the leaders of a revolutionary movement which had already killed millions of people in its quest for utopia gave a talk at a university, and students and faculty listened with respect. Then they verbally demolished the speakers,... [Read More]
Tracked on November 21, 2006 01:04 AM
Comments
Perhaps I'm getting cynical in my old age, but I wonder how a college crowd these days, including the professors, would deal with a visit by CPUSA officials.
I'm also reminded of the time Max Schactman had a debate with Gus Hall and after reciting the fates of a number of Soviet communist officials he pointed at Hall and said, "There, but for an accident of geography, is a corpse."
Alex Bensky | November 21, 2006 08:53 AM
Speaking as a member of Trinity's Class of '91 (i.e. having been there during Ops. Desert Shield and Desert Storm in my senior year), I can attest that those halcyon days in which facile sophistry at the podium was actually held accountable have most certainly not been recovered.
During the war and its run-up, antiwar and antiadministration speakers were given full sway over the conduct of any public forum, and those who actually spoke out for the people of Kuwait and weren't blind to the kind of creature Saddam was were drowned out by the hateful catcalls of the self-absorbed trust-fund left.
I shudder to think what kind of reception an al Qaeda sympathizer would be treated to, were he/she to have the temerity to take to the lectern in Mather Hall to make a case for death-obsessed terrorists. I wonder: would the students (or, say, the Poli Sci faculty) bring flowers and candy?
Man, I wish I could have been there for the CPUSA forum...sigh.
Charlie | November 21, 2006 04:01 PM
