Barometer Of Inanity
By Mitch Berg
I’m not sure if it’s really a “barometer” measuring howPresident Obama is doing on the far left – but h if the President is losing Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, it could be fairly said he’s got a problem among the friendlies.
Pallmeyer starts by repeating what is to us on the right the absurdly obvious:
“The Nobel Committee gambled and lost,” says Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, assistant professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas. President Obama’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize was “a defense of war and militarism. … With this speech the Nobel Committee’s gamble became an embarrassment.”
Pallmeyer’s right – although the embarassment really happened the moment they picked a brand new president for the “peace” prize simply for not being George W. Bush.
But Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer isn’t one for such distinctions. He’s a professor at Saint Thomas, in the “peace studies” department; if there’s an academic discipline with less actual rigor or merit than “peace studies”, I’m at a loss to think of it.
Nelson-Pallmeyer speculated that “when [members of the Nobel Committee] made their decision they recognized how the stars had alligned in one of those rare moments in history in which crises converge with opportunities.”
I was going to write something here, but it’d just repeat my previous paragraph.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Ah, politics. If Obama moves far enough to the left to satisfy people like Pallmeyer he’ll further motivate the right to get to the polls next autumn.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Well, how about:
http://www.stthomas.edu/womensstudies/
December 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Crazy Jack (as I like to call him) has company. The anti-war group on campus held a protest last Wednesday when it was like 2F out with a windchill of -20F. I have to hand it to them, I don’t know if I am that committed to any cause. But they were totally pissed and slamming Obama. It’s like they were actually surprised he was fighting the war in Afghanistan and not pulling out. But I think that his far left base has gone crazy, they might run a candidate against him in 2012 like Teddy ran in 1980 against Carter. Watch it happen.
December 15th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Peace studies is the philosophy that is responsible for the astounding success in dealing with Iran this past year. That we could have negotiated with Hitler and avoided WWII. That for all their studying have yet to figure out you can not negotiate with someone who is doesn’t want anything you offer. Also opposed to the stick to encourage someone to work something out. A good classroom exercise might be to wander thru some high crime area in the middle of the night carrying something of value. Do a controlled experiment where 1/2 the class goes by themselves and the other 1/2 goes with a large policeman with a large gun. See which group encounters the more motivated people to negotiate with and who makes the best deal.
December 16th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
What if they launched a Department of Peace Studies and nobody applied?