<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark Moyar reviews the new memoir by former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faust was an unabashed radical during her time running the university – a once-great institution that recently graduated David Hogg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And her memoir highlights a tendency that I’ve identified in a depressing pluraity of “progressives”, including a dismal mass of American ones; an understanding of “freedom” that is utterly perverse (I’ve added emphasis):<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nFaust doesn\u2019t delve into the how, but she does address the why in her third objection. When she was 15 years old, she recounts, her outlook on American anti-communism changed during a trip to Eastern Europe. The police-state tactics of the communist regimes, she acknowledges, seemed to violate their professions of freedom. Nevertheless, \u201cI began to understand that when East German communists used \u2014 as they often did \u2014 \u2018freedom,\u2019 they meant something quite different from what I had come to understand. \u2018Freedom\u2019 in my mind had<\/strong> meant exclusively \u2018freedom from\u2019: freedom from censorship, from restrictions of movement, from governmental dictates or oppression. It was a revelation for me to hear East Germans speaking of a \u2018freedom to\u2019: freedom to be educated, to get health care, to work<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The success of communists in providing universal health care and eliminating unemployment was so persuasive, Faust recounts, that she decided American anti-communism to be unjustified and immoral. Hence, the war to stop communism in Vietnam was \u201ccruel and illegitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It’s not a revelation that Communists saw “freedom” in the same way a herd of anthropomorphic livestock might. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, sad to say, it’s no longer a revelation that one of academia’s most prestigious executives might, anymore, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Moyar reviews the new memoir by former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust. Faust was an unabashed radical during her time running the university – a once-great institution that recently graduated David Hogg. And her memoir highlights a tendency that I’ve identified in a depressing pluraity of “progressives”, including a dismal mass of American ones; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85946,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85943\/revisions\/85946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}