I’m gonna “home COLLEGE” Buster…

After reading Sigmund’s account of a campus forum ostensibly meant to forment understanding well…this is troubling, as Joe Biden would say, very troubling:

In any event, the presentations were made and they were followed up by questions. Naturally, the self absorbed undergrads immediately took to the floor and predictably found novel ways to repeat the same thing, that we all need to get along. They ended their profound remarks with misunderstood quotes from Khalil Gibran, Kierkegaard, Andy Warhol and their pre school teachers.

When the ‘look at me, mommy!’ crowd was done, another ‘Muslim scholar’ in attendance took to the microphone to make a statement, in which he noted the obvious superiority of the Quran as and unchanged sacred text, as opposed to both the Old and New testaments. We immediately rose and challenged his assertion re the Quran, citing scholarly evidence to the contrary (there are at least three versions of the Quran. Yes, we are equipped to that argument. We are after all, SC&A).

At that point, we were interrupted and told that this was not the forum for textual discussions that might offend some.

In other words, don’t bother me with facts while I’m trying to dazzle you with bullsh*t. Unfortunately, SCA was told more than once that facts were…troubling. To be honest, this exchange sounds like something right out of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, one of any number of conversations between Yossarian and almost anyone in the book, in fact.

After the presentation, we had the good fortune to be introduced to a professor of psychiatry at Duke Medical School. This person is a highly regarded ‘name’ and maintains serious status at that world class institution. His work is world renowned.

…Within a few minutes, he launched into a virulently anti American and and anti George Bush tirade, insisting that George Bush ‘lied’ and that there were never any WMD’s in Iraq and that George Bush lied to the American people when he said there was a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. We replied that Mr Bush had never said there was a connection between 9/11 and Saddam and that Saddam most certainly had manufactured and used WMD’s.

At this point, the doctor pulled us aside and said, he didn’t want to get into the specifics of what was and wasn’t said… He did say that George Bush was a fascist and almost a Nazi…

We looked at this world renowned doctor and asked, “Are you insane?”…then the doctor went on to say that there was another way to disarm Saddam other than war. We asked what that was.

The doctor went on to describe a technique used in residential settings, when a client is in a highly agitated state (please note that even SC&A can be PC). The client is surrounded by professionals, that very slowly move in to subdue the client. It is the hope that the when the client sees the inevitable, he will return to a calm state.

The doctor noted that the US needed to surround Iraq with two million soldiers and very slowly, go house to house, looking for weapons and in doing so, they would tighten the noose around Saddam Hussein. Thus surrounded, the doctor posited the notion that Saddam would come to his senses and surrender.

This was the advice and opinion from a world class psychiatrist teaching at a world class institution.

We repeated our question to this world renowned doctor, even more forcefully- “Are you insane?” We told the doctor that he had boxed himself into a clearly untenable position, and that we felt sorry for him. It was a shame we said, that a brilliant mind such as his, was co-opted by such drivel.

As we were about to leave, we exchanged email addresses and then, out of the blue, the good doctor whispered in my ear that Iranian president Almahdinejad really was crazy and needed to be stopped.

Egad.

George W. Bush is a nazi, but Almahdinejad needs stopping. I wonder who in the world these folks think will do it. Only Bush, as far as I can see, the Nazi. After he does it, of course, they will damn him for it, as they wipe the sweat from their brow in relief.

Once again I am wondering if I could possibly “home College” my kid.

UPDATE: Sigmund has updated his own thoughts, here and included a must-read link to this piece by David Horowitz.