As we saw from his March 17 webcast, William Lind was not inclined to consider taking any responsibility whatsoever for the (presumably) unintended consequences of his rhetoric. This is not to say, however, that he isn’t eager to take credit for political influence his ideas may on powerful state actors.
In his March 24 webcast, Lind revealed the “scoop” that his initiative may have inspired President Trump’s executive order to protect conservative speech on university campuses. “We have,” Lind boasted, “what I think is the inside story on one of last week’s news events — mainly the President Trump’s announcement that 35 billion dollars worth of federal funding for higher education is going to be tied to freedom of thought and expression on college and university campuses.” According to Lind, what happened is that, as a board member of a conservative group of Dartmouth University alumni, he wrote a memo — subsequently forwarded to the White House by a well connected board member — that recommended substantially the steps taken by Trump in his executive order.
This, by the way, is a basic rule of politics. If you’re going bottom-up you come in as a supplicant. You’re either ignored or kicked in the teeth. The way you get something to happen politically is to come in top-down. You come on… you come down on the center you’re targeting from a higher political level. Well there’s no higher level obviously than the White House.
The problem of discrimination against conservative faculty, students and outside speakers by colleges and universities is not restricted to Dartmouth. It has become general throughout academia. The same college administrators and faculty members who demand diversity in all things also require uniformity in the one area most important to any academic institution – thought. And the ideas that contradict political correctness — including arguments for free markets, traditional morals and Western Judaeo-Christian culture — are subject to censorship. Faculty, students and speakers who express conservative views find their careers threatened, face college discipline or are simply shouted down with no penalties imposed on those who threaten violence.
The origin of these practices is Herbert Marcuse’s essay on liberating tolerance, which called for tolerance for all ideas and viewpoints coming from the left and intolerance of all ideas and viewpoints coming from the right. This is what college administrators and professors now mean when they call for tolerance.
The deep state obviously is going to hate all this because it’s populated by cultural Marxists, including in the trump administration, and they’re going to do their best to sabotage this with the old bureaucratic rule: delay is the the surest form of denial. They will be hoping to make sure nothing happens and nothing changes at least ’til the end of President Trump’s first term. So we’re gonna have to watch this carefully. If it… if it is implemented and implemented forcefully as it needs to be.
Brent: Well there you have it. if you want the cutting edge in conservative activism — right-wing activism — look no further than TR.
William Lind: Absolutely. And if this doesn’t work, we’re gonna tell Jeff to get back in his Cobra and launch an airstrike.
Jeff Groom: That would actually work because the Cobra uses a Hellfire, which, as you know, Bill, attacks from the top down on things. It doesn’t fly in armour, but flies in top down where armour’s thinnest.
William Lind: And I can’t think of anything that colleges and universities more deserve than Hellfire.
FAEs are more powerful than conventional high-explosive munitions of comparable size, are more likely to kill and injure people in bunkers, shelters, and caves, and kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area. In urban settings it is very difficult to limit the effect of this weapon to combatants, and the nature of FAE explosions makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter from their destructive effect.
Remember though, folks, the real victims here are the conservatives being persecuted for compulsively joking about incinerating their political, ethnic and religious enemies.
In part four of this series, I read Herbert Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” so you don’t have to.
I did not know William Lind was an actual person much less John Lind. And a military psychological strategist at that too! These people never admit to guilt of any type. Hopefully, the “topkick” comic book hero Sgt. John Rock will show up. Doubtful though. Great exposé on a fool.
It would be amusing if they did actually implement something like this. Because the vast majority of free speech suppression and overt ideological discrimination occurs at religious colleges and universities. And not just the flaming right wing evangelical republican ones, the quieter ones right here in river city. Requirements that faculty sign statements of ‘sexual purity’, essays about their personal relationship with Jesus from prospective hires, speaking contracts forbidding various topics or opinions.
15 or so years ago William S Lind had some interest among critics of the US military.
Lind wrote and talked about “4th generation warfare”, which is somewhat informative since 9/11 the state’s ‘monopoly on use of force’ has been diluted by non government actors like the various incarnations of al Qaeda.
The convergence of military and political dimensions into war helped explain some of the issues around Vietnam, certainly not al.
Here is some background. The criticism was industrial war of the German and American brand is become obsolete.
It is a long time since I thought about “4th generation warfare”!