Clipping the Eagle's Wings

from OurFuture.org:



Clipping the Eagle's Wings
By Rick Perlstein

May 8th, 2008 - 2:33pm ET


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Kathy G weighs in at Crooked Timber with just about the definitive post on this obscene business of Washington University in St. Louis conferring an honorary degree on Phyllis Schlafly. Two more things worth saying, however.

First, I want to respond to commenter Milton Appling below. He points out what he claims should be a mitigating factor: that no one should be surprised that Wash U. is wrapped up in this nonsense, given that they host a right-wing business school named for conservative benefactor John Olin: "That should be all that you need to know about Wash U regarding giving the Eagle an honorary degree." Another friend, a St. Louis native, likewise writes in to point out the institution's historic conservative, citing the way they dissolved their sociology department in the 1980s as a way to shake loose all the suspect lefties lodged within.

In fact, the Olin business is all you need to know why it's so important to press forward with the movement to shame Wash U. on their egregious lapse of intellectual standards.

One of the first principles of politics is to choose battlefields to fight on that unite your side and divide the opponents. The fact that Wash University's administration and benefactor class is lousy with the sort of conservatives who love Milton Friedman-style business schools is all the more reason to point up the absurdity of Washington University association with Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly believes a secretive cast of bankers—the "Bildergergers"—are conspiring to impose One World Government on the United States. She believed it in the 1960s, when she said the Bilderbergers were fronting for the International Communist Conspiracy, and she believes it now (or, at least, she believed it in 1997 when I interviewed her; I have it on tape) that that International Communist Conspiracy is fifteen years gone. Schlafly believes—or claimed to believe—that if the Equal Rights Amendment passed, boys bathrooms and girls bathrooms, would be outlawed, and that little girls would be forced to see little boys' wee-wees each and every day; and thatwomen would not be able to refuse their husbands if their husbands demanded they went out to work—would be slaves of their husbands. And yes, these things are crazy. And Phyllis Schlafly believes them, because Phyllis Schlafly—for all her brilliance, organizational accumen, and ability to gain get granted respect among the councils of the respected and powerful—is crazy.

If the city of St. Louis learns, if the greater Washington University community learns, if America learns, if the world learns just how crazy she is, thanks to the efforts of this movement, the respectable business conservatives of Washington University's Oilin School will want nothing to do with her. She will be, as she should be, an albatross around their respectable conservative necks. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/clipping-eagles-wings