Lessons Not Learned

The Price we Pay

In 1989 millions of people were suddenly freed from socialist oppression when most of the communist world collapsed because of the failure of their socialist economies and the firm military pressure of the United States under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. Yet virtually no media acknowledgement has been made of the twenty year anniversary of what might arguably be called the most important year in modern history. The only commemoration I've seen locally is a display in the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College. 

How did we win the Cold War, and yet seem to have completely forgotten the lessons of that victory? Part of it is due to the domination of our higher education system by leftists, who at the time of the socialist collapse were still preaching about the "historical inevtablity" of socialism. The fall of the Berlin Wall should have been followed by the mass resignations of the heads of the humanities departments of nearly all our leading colleges and universities. 

Instead, they stayed on and pretended the fall of the socialist world had no significance. Therefore, most Americans have never been properly educated about the Cold War, what it meant, and the important lessons to be learned. While the rest of the world is embracing free markets and enjoying the prosperity it brings, ironically the United States is trapped in a leftward drift with fading freedoms and a government crippled economy.

Cool Ad

This commercial from Alabama is a masterpiece of reverse psychology. 

 

Amherst Antics

One good way to decorate this abandoned storefront in downtown Amherst is to let kids paint Halloween pictures on it.

The UMass Chess Club holds its meetings in the Blue Wall, the better to attract new members.

I was walking past the headquarters of the UMass Cannabis Club and saw that libertarian activist Terry Franklin was hanging out. I stopped in and took his picture.

Then he took mine.

Across the hall I saw this safe sex bulletin board decorated with drawsings of vaginas. Click photo to enlarge. 

 

Wow, I remember just a few years ago there was a big stink at UMass about a public display of the image of a cock in a condom with a mouth near it. There was even a decency rally. 

Personally I do not find images of genitalia offensive. But why the protest by some over the male anatomy display but not the female? Is there a double standard? 

Good News

This coffeshop on King Street in Northampton is very popular.

Walking past it the other night after it was closed I saw this sign in the window that no doubt thrilled some anxious biker. 

Today's Video

A beautiful performance by Storm the Ohio in Northampton last week

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Media Trick

 



Back during the Vietnam War, when people were protesting by the thousands against U.S. policy, conservative elements of the media resorted to an old and dishonest trick to make the protesters look bad. They would single out the craziest looking person from the protest rally, interview them, photograph them and then put that protester on the front page as the most visible symbol of the entire rally. While most of those protesting were much more normal looking and acting than the crazies they singled out, people reading about the rally got the impression that it was only a bunch of nuts that were opposing the war.

It's therefore ironic to see the same technique revived today from the Left to portray the critics of the Obama Administration. Media sources friendly to the Administration have been going to the numerous protests against President Obama's policies and focusing on the non typical extremists in the crowd, hoping that the public will assume that is what those who oppose Obama are like. The thousands of working men and soccer moms attending with their children are ignored, while the two drunken rednecks accusing Obama of being a Nazi get all the attention.

Such techniques usually don't work in the long run if there are genuine issues to be raised. No matter how much the media tried to portray the anti-Vietnam movement as consisting of crackpots, doing so could not prevent the growing doubts of average Americans about the war. In the same way, the media attempts to dismiss the anti-Obama protesters has increasingly less traction as more and more Americans conclude that regardless of who is protesting and how, there are legitimate reasons for deep concern.





In case you want to wear bugs here are examples of bug jewelry on display in the window of the Skera Gallery in Northampton.

Frank Sinatra was undoubtedly a legend,, but too often overlooked is the brief but brilliant career of his daughter Nancy, who unlike her old man had the sense to retire before she was past her prime. I remember how my straight friends used to drag me to divey Springfield strip clubs where Nancy's These Boots Were Made for Walkin' was played several times a night while the strippers made stupid S&M moves. The audience always went crazy. Straight people - I'll never understand them. 

UMass Library has a Bad Name

Time for a change.

Oh no! It's snowing again!

As always, the snow did nothing to stop these students from trudging past the W.E.B. Dubois Library on their way to class this morning.

Library namesake W.E.B. Dubois has been written about lately by syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell, and not in a flattering way. Says Sowell:

W.E.B. DuBois was so taken with the Nazi movement that he put swastikas on the cover of a magazine he edited, despite complaints from Jewish readers.

Even after Hitler achieved dictatorial power in Germany in 1933, DuBois declared that the Nazi dictatorship was "absolutely necessary in order to get the state in order."

As late as 1937 he said in a speech in Harlem that "there is today, in some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past."

Yikes, the UMass library named after a Nazi sympathizer? Of course Hitler isn't the worst mass murder of the 20th century, that would be Chairman Mao of socialist China (estimated death toll 60 million) whom Dubois also admired. 

For years a picture of Dubois proudly posing with Mao hung in the library lobby, where it attracted numerous complaints from Chinese exchange students who were shocked and offended that a picture of the most brutal dictator of modern times was so honored. When the lobby was recently remodeled, someone apparently "forgot" to re-hang the offending portrait.

In his youth DuBois was one of the founders of the NAACP, for which he should be praised. However the rest of his career was a terrible embarrassment, in which he displayed spectacularly bad judgement in supporting virtually every blood-thirsty dictator he ever heard of provided they (as both Hitler and Mao did) claimed to be socialists.

When I was at UMass back in the 70's, the library had no name. Everyone referred to it simply as "The UMass Library." Then in the 1980's, the peak years when campus leftists ran wild on campus, the move was made to name the library after DuBois, primarily to honor his radical leftist views. Since then the Cold War has ended, socialism is totally discredited and former socialist heroes like Mao are now regarded as the evil tyrants they really were.

Therefore, the naming of the library after the foolhardy DuBois has become an embarrassment to the university, sort of like the honorary degree UMass gave to African despot Robert Mugabe around the same time (again at the urging of campus leftists).

The time is now long overdue to quietly erase the DuBois name from the building and go back to simply calling it "The Library."

Perhaps the UMass Republican Club will lead the renaming effort. 

Meanwhile, as the snow comes floating down upon us, we can at least follow the advice of this sign outside a Northampton shop.

 



What do UMass students do when they're not rallying for or against something or studying in a library named after a Nazi sympathizer? They bounce off the walls.

They're good at it too.