First, an observation by Michael Barone in the course of a discussion of Sam Alito:

Our universities today have become our most intellectually corrupt institutions. University administrators must lie and deny that they use racial quotas and preferences in admissions, when they devote much of their energy to doing just that. They must pledge allegiance to diversity, when their campuses are among the least politically diverse parts of our society, with speech codes that penalize dissent and sometimes violent suppression of conservative opinion.

If a university has one overriding duty, it is to the truth. If administrators lie and deny, or, like the appalling Lawrence Summers (here and here), they subsidize nutty utopian fantasies of the faculty rather than confront their ideas, the institutions have surrendered important parts of their core values. It would help matters if they would drop their attitude of moral superiority — that would be a start.

Second, we have this corker from Nicholas deB. Katzenbach on his approval of the wiretapping of Martin Luther King at the request of J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy:

When Hoover asked for the wiretaps, Bobby consulted me (I was then his deputy) and Burke Marshall, head of the Civil Rights Division. Both of us agreed to the tap because we believed a refusal would lend credence to the allegation of communist influence, while permitting the tap, we hoped, would demonstrate the contrary. I think the decision was the right one, under the circumstances…..Today we are again engaged in a debate over wiretapping for reasons of national security — the same kind of justification Hoover offered when he wanted to spy on King. The problem, then as now, is not the invasion of privacy, although that can be a difficulty. But it fades in significance to the claim of unfettered authority in the name of “national security.”

Which part of this is most offensive: (a) the breezy way Katzenbach projects his own immorality and bad judgment onto the Bush administration; (b) the equating of Dr. Martin Luther King with people in America chatting up Al Qaeda agents in foreign lands; or (c) the fact that to this day Katzenbach defends his wiretapping of King as the right decision?

Addendum

By way of contrast, we have an uplifting piece by Scott Johnson on the great Dr. Martin Luther King, a testament of redemption through fidelity to the truth.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 8:26 am and is filed under Democrats, General, New Media, Religion, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.