Saeva Indignatio

A recent editorial , published by The Daily Collegian, the University of Massachusetts's student newspaper, was titled 'Pat Tillman is not a hero: He got what was coming to him' The author, a grad student named Rene Gonzalez writes that Americans are too stupid to know what a hero is or much of anything else. His unique perspective makes him the purveyor of an insight he feels compelled to share:

The rancor here is far beyond the usual unbathed, jam-band loving types that have become more common than designer "trucker hats" on campuses. His nescient foreign affairs analysis is just as dull as those hippies however, "After all, whether we like them or not, the Taliban is more Afghani than we are. Their resistance is more legitimate than our invasion...". The Imperial Japanese were certainly "more" Japanese than the US soldiers that occupied Japan after WWII as were the Nazis more German than the Allies. But it is not in contests of comparative ethnicity that we judge legitimacy. To question the legitimacy of America's coalition to go into Afghanistan after Sept 11th is sophomoric anomie backed by nothing.

So much hate for America and Pat Tillman the man, and resentment towards the appreciation paid to a soldier who embodied bravery and patriotism. The far left has always hated patriotism because they see it as jingoistic and another crutch, like religion, of the small minds. Convinced of their superior intellect, these liberals will proffer moral relativism and other postmodern philosophy as evidence that most people--those below them--are lemmings who need to be told what think. Emerson though, reminds us that "character is higher than intellect".

Were this one piece in a collegiate daily though, it could be explained away by drugs, drinking, or X-Box withdrawal. Unfortunately, Tillman and America bashing have made the mainstream press as well. MSNBC and Slate both recently published a cartoon by Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist and writer, that espouses the same nonsense. The two websites have since pulled the cartoon. In it, the author describes Pat Tillman as "a cog in a low rent occupation army that shot more innocent civilians than terrorists to prop up puppet rulers and exploit gas and oil resources". The final frame shows three men at a publication offering the one word that comes to mind when hearing the Pat Tillman story. The first man says "idiot", the second "sap" and the third, the tie wearing editor is the only one who says "hero".

Not before he was buried Ranger Corporal Tillman, a man who never sought publicity for his service after giving up a 3 million dollar football contract, was being used as a political punching bag. The left--there are more examples--has gone to painting him as nothing but a dumb jock, worshipped by people too stupid to realize that the war on terror is a sham to cover up a diabolical scheme to lower gasoline prices. At times like these I wonder at how powerful their hatred of America must be to make them so ghoulish and benighted. Have you seen the price of gas recently? I ask you, who is the idiot, and who is the hero?

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