|
 R
founder
William F. Buckley Jr. once said that he "should sooner live
in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone
directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members
of Harvard University." These famous words now have a corollary:
We should sooner send into battle the first 2,000 young men in the
Boston telephone directory than 2,000 at Harvard University.
Harvard's student
newspaper, the Crimson, released a poll yesterday showing
that a majority of the school's undergraduates — 69 percent
— support taking military action against the terrorists responsible
for the September 11 massacres. This isn't quite where the general
public is on the matter — 85 percent of Americans support military
action, according to a recent CBS/New York Times survey —
but it still looks like a strong response.
Except that
it's not. Only 28 percent of the undergrads said they would support
military strikes if they resulted in the loss of innocent human
life. The wider public, which knows war is a dirty business and
terrorists must be fought with vigor, remain overwhelmingly sensible:
75 percent say the loss of innocent life is an acceptable by-product
of the war on terrorism.
The Harvard
youngsters also don't want to risk their precious little necks —
and this is especially true among the self-identified Democrats.
Only 32 percent of campus Democrats said they would be willing to
serve in the armed forces if called up, versus 42 percent of the
independents and 56 percent of the Republicans. Those GOP numbers
are fairly depressing in their own right — might a gender gap
explain them? — but the Democratic response is astonishingly
low.
Perhaps this
is the moral influence of Bill Clinton, a famous Democrat who dodged
military service when he was a similar age. Or perhaps the campus
is full of people who simply hate President Bush. As Marcie B. Bianco,
head of the Harvard College Democrats, told the Crimson:
"Bush is acting like he's Captain America, going on television
and telling Americans there has to be a strong military response."
If there really
were a Captain America, he probably wouldn't be a member of the
Harvard College Democrats. Come to think of it, maybe John F. Kennedy
of PT-109 wouldn't be a member, either.
Bono Fides
"I do not support a National ID Card program and if Congress
were to consider this proposal, I would vote against it," says
Rep. Mary Bono (R., Calif.) in a press statement.
Bono intends
to clarify a comment made to a reporter for her local newspaper
that some people interpreted as support for a national ID system
— and which received an enormous amount of attention when the
Drudge Report website linked to the story. "I was responding
to a question regarding what types of proposals may be brought before
Congress to deal with this major terrorist threat," explains
Bono.
Worth Reading
Gerald
Posner explains why he's changed his mind about President Bush.
|
