Four years of graduate education
need not produce the ability to
perceive intelligently, as Mr. Noller
has shown us. Apparently he is
unable to separate ends and means.
The primary befuddlement of his
letter is the confusion between the
expressed desires of the academic
community and their advocated
means. The academic community
has certainly pointed out the
disturbing incongruities of our
system. To develop understanding
and knowledge is the purpose of
education, it is said. To say the
prevailing perception is wrong is
really only to say that your
perception suffers from a different
distortion. That academicians have
made us aware does not establish
any direct causal link with the
means we employ.
Even careless reading would
reveal that the liberal academic
community has repudiated marques,
who claimed that the cause of
the left is so worthy that violence is
acceptable. A perceptive mind
would also note that political
violence has never been artificially
created - contrary to conservative
dogma - but it is the pursuit of the
inability of the political system to
respond. To the wishes of its
population, as those wishes are
expressed by groups with varying
intensities, one need only look to
Italy to see the tendency of
violence to follow, not proceed, the
breakdown of a political system. In
our system, we have a significant
constituency that holds no conventional
power, but is told by those
holding power that they must fight
a war - and possibly die - that
they do not believe in and they are
also told that they have no right to
decide it or when or whom it is
moral to kill. No political system
gives so much that it can deny one
the right to decide this basic
meaning of existence, (Expecting
consistency, I would assume that
you have joined up.).
Perhaps the most difficult point
to communicate not state to
conservatives is that they do not
conceive of any inability of the
system to respond because they are
the system. Thus they see the
system as working quite well, and
those who are frustrated by the
system are viewed as destroying it,
not as seeking a response to those
wishes. It is the very type of
thought which has led us to view
blacks, student leftists, the poor,
welfare people etc, as attacking the
system, and not seeking a response.
Thus we mistakenly view businessmen,
military men college administrators
etc as defending the political
system, when what they are really
doing is defending the response of
the system.
Jeff Stone cash
Grad. A&S
