Comments Elsewhere

Stefan, well, there are lots of possible motivations that they might have had — I’m not sure what “America-bashing” is supposed to mean here, but leftist rhetoric, specifically antiwar sentiment, opposition to government war as such, squeamishness about death and violence in general, or any number of other things could have been behind different student gov members’ decisions. My point is just that it’s not obvious that universities should concern themselves with celebrating people whose chief claim to fame is killing a bunch of people at the command of the government. Certainly not in an unjust war — that’s plainly immoral — and not even in a just war, really. (I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide which the air war in the Pacific was.) Trumpeting martial glory just isn’t the function of a University in the first place, and isn’t something that we need more of from the command-posts of our re-barbarizing society. So I find it hard to work up much outrage at the students whether their motives were clearly praiseworthy or muddled and sentimental. If it’s the latter, they should think harder about what their concerns are, but they do at least have some slippery hold on the good, and they haven’t done anything wrong, let alone anything contemptible or “despicable,” in rejecting a commemorative memorial for Boyington.