The Washington Post has nuggety-nugaty story about the nugatory nature of academic nabobs. The George Mason University faculty senate voted against the Patriot Act yesteday with much high-minded nonsense. Which is to say 30 professors voted against it. Here’s one nugget:

James T. Bennett, faculty senate chairman and an economics professor, said all but one of more than 30 members who attended the meeting voted for the resolution.
“The Patriot Act runs against the grain of the typical academic,” Bennett said. “The whole idea of the academy is to look at all different points of view. This is the kind of thing that takes place in a dictatorship.”

Me: Which “point of view” is being oppressed. You can still take out a copy of the “Hermeneutics of Herpes: Sexually Transmitted Dissidence in Haight Ashbury 1965-1974.”

The only point of view the government is interested in is the point of view which says, “Hey, maybe that dirty bomb would go better under that playground.”

Another nugget:

David L. Kuebrich, an associate professor of English who is secretary of the faculty senate, said he thinks the danger in the Patriot Act “is that we will curtail speech or research that would be quite critical of foreign policy at a time when we really need a broad review and to be open to dissenting voices.”

Me: Ahh the arrogant solipsism of the literary genius overlooked! But tell me professor, If the government hasn’t picked off Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky or Al Franken why, exactly, would they crush their jackboot down upon the craniums of the adventurous GMU scholar eager to speak truth to power about the sexual rhetoric implicit in the cruise missile?

Get over yourselves people.