We’re Losing the Freedom Our Fathers and Sons Fought For

We’re Losing the Freedom Our Fathers and Sons Fought For

American Spectator - Monday May 1, 2017

by Ben Stein

Night after night, I stay up late watching documentaries about World War II. I’m obsessed with it. Not surprising since it was the biggest event in the history of the human race. My father was in the Navy during the war, although to this day, I am not sure what he did. My father-in-law served in combat under Patton and was awarded the Silver Star for combat gallantry before he was 22 years old, fighting hand to hand against the toughest of the tough, Hitler’s SS, near Zeitlen.

The documentary I am watching right now is The War by Ken Burns. It came out ten years ago or so. I love every part of it. What I love most, though, is the portrayal of a nation totally united behind the goal of securing freedom and defending the Constitution. From every hill and hollow, every tenement and mansion, men and women fought, sacrificed, worked to defeat the incredibly powerful Nazis and Japanese. The pain and struggle that the men, women, and children of this nation went through to preserve our freedoms was literally fantastic.

I watch the men dying in Italian valleys, shot out of the sky above Schweinfurt, and tortured in Japanese prison camps, and I go to sleep deeply saddened. These wonderful people bled and died and cried for our freedom — and now we are throwing it away with both hands at what should be the bastions of freedom — the universities.

The nation’s universities have become no-go zones for people who do not hew to the one-party, anti-American, anti-police, anti-business attitudes of the violent brownshirts. Quiet, scholarly geniuses like Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald — who dare to suggest that Americans should work for a living, who speak out in defense of the police — are shouted down, shoved, sometimes assaulted, and chased from campuses under guard. Ann Coulter, a long-time friend, staggeringly intelligent and amusing, is not permitted to speak at a University of California campus, Berkeley, because she makes such witty, shining defenses of our great nation. This is a taxpayer-funded campus.

There’s an atmosphere of terror on campuses across the country. My beloved law school alma mater, mighty Yale, shamed itself recently by blackballing faculty who wanted to keep a sense of humor on the campus.

The formula is simple. Get a few nonwhite students to label a potential speaker a racist, whether or not there is the slightest evidence he or she is. Then bring in the looney left faculty, then bring in the women with fake charges of sexism, and soon you have a mighty avalanche against the speaker. The fascists call themselves anti-fascists, of course. But anyone with eyes and ears can see and hear who’s burning the books.

As far as I know, neither Hitler nor the Japanese ever planned to invade America. Certainly Vietnam didn’t. North Korea is a menace, but a poverty-stricken nation of 22 million is not going to subjugate us and take away our freedom.

They don’t have to. We’ve done it to ourselves on our campuses. Via our imbecile young people and their pawns and masters in the faculties, we have incinerated the First Amendment. We’ve made sure that our young learn only lies and subversive propaganda against America. Hitler had his storm troopers to silence the opposition. We have Black Lives Matter, which aims to emasculate the main force guarding black lives — the police — and which is always in the vanguard at closing down free speech. It’s a catastrophe for this country. It’s not what our young men and their parents fought for, died for, and wept for in The War. Look quick. We’re losing this war for freedom — and fast.

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