An Open Book

“Imagine being on the wrong side of history while it repeats itself; it’s like failing an open book test.” Anonymous

Students took over universities with organized protests, sometimes violent, that shut down classes; some professors joined the activists and administrators did little to nothing about it. Jewish students and professors were intimidated, sometimes physically attacked, and were barred from campuses. The naked anti-Semitism in the nation’s universities exploded; it seemed as though the hard work of years cultivating an academic society of hate was on display.  It was all too well-planned and organized to be something spontaneous, rather more like a reaction to some staged event, all of which should have been rejected for the barbaric autocracy and racism it represented.

The above account is not about the recent American student protests at US universities; it is a summary of the experiences of various professors and students at German universities in 1932-33, such as Peter Drucker, an Austrian born economist and lecturer at Frankfurt University, whose experience of what happened there convinced him to leave Germany; he immigrated to the US where he became a successful management consultant, educator and author. The Nazis knew that if they were to be successful in undermining the cultural heritage of Western Civilization, they had to reduce education to indoctrination; after all, it wasn’t called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party” because of its allegiance to objective scholarship and freedom of conscience. They also needed a scapegoat to promote hatred and deflect criticism, and what better one to focus on than the ready-at-hand anti-Semitism in Europe.

Mark Twain was very clever when he said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, it just rhymes.” The similarities of what happened in 1932-33 Germany and 2023-24 America are rhyming all too well. While the Congressional hearings of university administrators regarding anti-Semitism were informative, it was a case of too little, too late; the recent attack on the congregation for Sabbath services at the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles by Palestinian supporters clearly illustrates the root cause and purpose of these protests. It was not the first, and likely not the last example of Nazism with those groups.

The anonymous quote with the title of this post is an accurate observation of how people may inexplicably tend to ignore the obvious, a case of willful ignorance or intellectual cowardice; regardless of which it is, neither of these protests were something that happened overnight. The protests in support of terrorists are a product of a festering hatred not only toward Jews and Israel, but also America.

What is called liberalism today grew out of a political and societal shift that began in the early 20^th century away from the very principles from which its name is derived. The term originated during the Enlightenment of the 18^th century, also known as the “Age of Reason”, an intellectual movement against superstition, autocracy, and blind faith; to distinguish it from 20^th century liberalism, it is often called “Classical Liberalism”. The name “liberal” derived from the word “liberty” as promoted by such political philosophers like Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, and Mills. Classical Liberalism espoused free trade, laissez-faire economics, consent of the governed, and a constitutionally limited government; power and compulsion were tyrannical traits to be abandoned in favor of a civil society.

This is not meant to be a post about the history of liberalism, but it is essential to understand the nature of the protests that arose out of the October 7^th massacre by Hamas, as those protests were a reaction to a staged event. Whatever vestiges remain of Classical Liberalism in America have long been the target of tyrannical movements such as Nazism, Communism, and more recently Islamic Fundamentalism; what Lenin called proponents of 20^th century liberalism as “useful idiots” can be aptly ascribed to the progressives that spawned the protests in support of the Palestinian terrorists. For the Islamic Jihadists that support terrorism, Israel is a symbol of Western Civilization imposed on an Islamic world, and supported by the US, a nation that is perceived as the last man standing for Classical Liberalism; if only that were true.

“Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.” Antisthenes, ancient Greek philosopher