We Don’t Really Mind

Communist Angela Davis Gets Warm Welcome from Marquette Officials

Yes, she is speaking tonight, and at very large venue (the Al McGuire Center) which Marquette would not let Young Americans for Freedom use for the (heavily oversubscribed) Ben Shapiro speech.

But the crowd does not look especially large:

Reminder- @MarquetteU refused to let @benshapiro speak in the AL where murder conspirator & communist Angela Davis speaks tonight @yaf pic.twitter.com/yZQdiblnJh

— Ethan Hollenberger (@EHollenberger) March 30, 2017

Ethan Hollenberger, at the event and tweeting about it notes that President Lovell called Davis an “awesome example.” This about a woman who is a self proclaimed Communist, and who bought guns for her fellow black militants in a plot that led to the killing of several innocent people.

When Ben Shapiro was at Marquette, the university required the reading of a disclaimer that noted that Shapiro’s views were not necessarily the views of Marquette University.

No such disclaimer was read at the Davis event.

Davis discussed a mural of FBI most wanted terrorist Assata Shakur, which decorated the wall of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center at Marquette, until we reported it, and an embarrassed Marquette administration had it painted over.

Davis called the mural “whitewashed” and called Shakur “a comrade and a friend.”

According to the Washington Examiner:

Davis is most renowned for her career of radical leftist activism, involving leadership stints in both the Black Panther Party and Communist Party. Today, she continues to proclaim that “capitalism is the most dangerous kind of future we can imagine” telling the Los Angeles Times recently, “as long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us.”

Davis is notorious for landing on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1970 for fleeing police after she was charged with purchasing the murder weapon used in a courtroom shootout in 1970.

At the Women’s March in January, Davis called on activists to become “more militant.”

“Those who still defend the supremacy of white male hetero-patriarchy,” she said, “had better watch out.”

Her views on abortion and marriage openly contradict Catholic teachings. Nevertheless, Marquette is touting Davis as a “living witness to history” and featuring her remarks as a “distinguished lecture.” Davis’ speaking fee has previously been listed between $10,000 and $20,000.

Note the double standard: when Ben Shapiro, a rather mainstream conservative spoke on campus, Marquette officials threatened to charge the Young Americans for Freedom (who sponsored the event) for security.

They backed off that, but then staffer Chrissy Nelson tried to undermine the event by advising leftists to sign up for a ticket and not show up, depriving an interested student of a seat. She did so at the suggestion of an unnamed “director of diversity.”

A disclaimer, saying that Marquette did not endorse Shapiro’s views, was required to be read.

Not only did no Marquette official laud Shapiro, Provost Dan Myers took to Marquette Wire to argue against Shapiro.

While minor contributions to Shapiro’s speaker’s fee were made by Student Government and the Residence Hall Council, apparently all of Davis’ fee was paid by Marquette. Out of tuition money.

So what we have here is Marquette officially lauding and supporting a Communist who was party to a murder plot.

It would be different if Marquette sponsored a diverse group of speakers, including some extremists from both left and right. But Marquette is officially on the hard left.

Free Market of Ideas

GLENN MCCOY © Belleville News-Democrat. Dist. By UNIVERSAL UCLICK. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Michael Coren Tells Off the “Occupy” Crowd

Simon Harak: Leftist Marquette Faculty “Peace” Activist Against Military Robots

Simon Harak is a hard left “peace activist” ensconced in Marquette’s Center for Peacemaking.

In fact, his notion of “peace” is that America should never fight anybody. He has little bad to say about America’s enemies, and has even defended Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

He is much more a leftist than a peace activist.

At any rate, Harak is recently been vocal in opposing the U.S. military’s use of robots in combat.

Some argue that military robotics will also increase the threat of terrorism. “If people know that they are going to be killed by these robots,” argues Fr. G. Simon Harak, director of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking, “then why would they not therefore retaliate against civilian centers in the United States? It only makes military sense that they’ll find where we are vulnerable.”

Of course, they have been trying to do this for a couple of decades now, and without much success since the Bush Administration’s clamp down on terrorism in the wake of 9/11.

More than anything else, the prospect of U.S. troops dying on some far-off battlefield limits public support for military force. Therefore, if the number of soldiers coming home in body bags can be significantly reduced, then the public will probably pay even less attention to foreign policy and future wars. This will in turn make it easier for politicians to start wars.

For instance, John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, recently wrote in the Washington Post that robots would allow the United States to intervene militarily in Darfur or other hot spots where politicians are currently reluctant to send flesh-and-blood soldiers.

Another hard-left periodical, Mother Jones also quotes Harak.

The Rev. G. Simon Harak, an ethicist and the director of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking, says, “Effectively, what these remote control robots are doing is removing people farther and farther from the consequences of their actions.”

Translation: if America goes to war, fewer Americans will be killed. For Harak, this is a bad thing.

Moreover, the similarity that the robots have to the life-like video games that young people grow up playing will blur reality further.

“If guys in the field already have difficulties distinguishing between civilians and combatants,” Harak asks, “what about when they are looking through a video screen?”

It is not only possible but likely that a surge of armed robots would lead to an increase in the number of civilian casualties, not a decrease.

The supposed conversation-ender that armed robots will save U.S. lives isn’t nearly as clear as it is often presented, either. “If you take a narrow view, fewer soldiers would die,” Harak says, “but that would be only on the battlefield.”

As happens in every war, however, those facing new technology will adapt to them.

“If those people being attacked feel helpless to strike at the robots themselves, they will try to strike at their command centers,” Harak says, “which might well be back in the United States or among civilian centers. That would then displace the battlefield to manufacturing plants and research facilities at universities where such things are being invented or assembled… The whole notion that we can be invulnerable is just a delusion.”

Harak somehow believes that terrorists, who have been trying to strike the American homeland, and dearly want to strike the Amercan homeland, would somehow gain the capability of doing so if the U.S. military uses robots.

Of course, under Obama, they may very well gain that capability. But if so, they will use it, robots or no robots.

Harak, it seems, is so anti-American that he actually wants any American intervention to create more American casualties. “Peace” is no part of his agenda. Hating America is.

Another Unsavory Obama Buddy

From FrontPage Magazine:

SHOULD A MAJOR PARTY CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT, WHO HAS PLEDGED HIS SUPPORT FOR OUR TROOPS, REJECT THE MONEY AND SUPPORT of an anti-American extremist who thinks Osama bin Laden had a “valid” argument on 9/11 and says she is currently acting “to undermine the war effort”? Barack Obama should be forced to make that decision about the ample funds he has received from Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans.

According to Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, Evans has “raised at least $50,000” for the Obama campaign. As long ago as February 2007, the Code Pink co-founder and pampered divorcee co-hosted a Hollywood fundraiser for Obama with her ex-husband (financier Max Palevsky) and Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen of DreamWorks studios.

The article goes on to quote a talk radio interview with Evans in which she, when asked about Osama’s claim that he attacked the U.S. because of U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia, and whether that was a valid argument said “Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that, that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East?”

Further:

Evans’ revealing performance could serve as light radio comedy – (e.g., she later blurted out, in earnest, “Why is being a Communist anti-American?”) – if it did not mask a long history of actions designed to demoralize soldiers in harm’s way, vilify the military (and the United States as a whole), provide monetary and military support to jihadists, and popularize the views of Islamic radicals who believe terrorists who kill U.S. troops are “guaranteed Paradise.”

Her statement that “you can’t go to war if you don’t have any soldiers,” dovetails with her work to break the morale of soldiers fighting in Iraq. In July 2003, Jodie Evans joined the Advisory Board of Iraq Occupation Watch (IOW) as a founding member. Castroites Medea Benjamin and Leslie Cagan established IOW in Baghdad to convince American soldiers serving in Iraq to obtain “conscientious objector” status and get sent home. As part of this process, they recycled anti-American news stories to the troops in Iraq, and spread “first-hand” accounts of mythical U.S. “atrocities” back home. At least one fellow Advisory Board member called for the murder of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Tiring of rhetoric, Code Pink tended to the material needs of those who killed U.S. troops or tended to the “insurgents.” In December 2004, Evans and Code Pink delivered $600,000 in cash and supplies to “the other side” in Fallujah, a recent battlefield and terrorist stronghold infamous for killing American soldiers.

In another statement, Evans made it clear that she viewed terrorist death squads as morally superior to American troops.

We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. The Iraqi people are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to preserve all they love. They are fighting for their lives, and we are fighting for lies.

Will Obama return the money she has raised for him?

If he wants to distance himself from this kind of anti-American fanaticism, he will.

But unfortunately for him, Evans views about the war don’t seem too much different from his own. Obama’s judgment and his patriotism are already questionable. If this particular association breaks into the media, they will be a big problem for him.