As background on its criticism of The New York Times for disclosing information about a secret government program to track the financing of terror suspects, The Wall Street Journal editors cited the remarkably inappropriate and irresponsible “apology” to students by Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger in his recent commencement address.

His generation, said Sulzberger:

The Journal judiciously observes that “someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it.”

Wallow in pacifism in time of war, the publisher recklessly instructs impressionable students, and never mind the dangers to life and liberty facing them. Never mind patriotism and a sense of loyalty to country. Relatedly, Sulzberger holds forth the promise of a painless, utopian society that has never existed and never will. Disdain self-sacrifice for the common good, he implicitly urges, and instead tend to one’s own narrow, narcissistic self-interest.

Sulzberger’s message is unfortunately standard on today’s campuses. Day in and day out students are bombarded with variations of his defeatist, self-absorbed, demagogic and partisan “wisdom.”

Thanks to such “role models,” many in this generation will not know why or how to defend themselves against their mortal enemies.