The Pen and the Sword: At URI, leftists make every week fascist week

By: Ryan Bilodeau

Posted: 10/24/07

10/24/07 - Armed with incoherent logic, appeals to emotion and outdated ideas, the political left on campus showed this week that it continues to value winning the offensive political war it has waged on President George W. Bush more than winning the defensive war Islamo-Fascists have waged on them.

Striking first, the Multicultural Center's Melvin Wade argued in the Cigar Friday that the assignment of the title "Islamo-Fascists" to those who have declared Jihad on America is "needlessly incendiary," and "make[s] dialogue impossible."

In reality, the only labels that are "needlessly incendiary" are the ones that the Multicultural Center assigns to groups like the Asian Student Association, the Black American Society and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Association. The differences these groups have with Indians, whites and heterosexuals, for example, are not ones that result in one group declaring jihad on the other like the differences Islamo-Fascists have with non-Muslims. Melvin Wade and the left are still sold on the pre-9/11 unrealistic notion that dialogue with Islamo-Fascists is possible.

Reasonable people not bound to a 1960s leftist ideology understand that when someone declares to the world that, "We will either achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life," like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did on behalf of Islamo-Fascists everywhere, reasonable dialogue is not possible.

Coming in for backup of the army of the left, members of the women's studies department approached our petition drive booth on Monday with a document entitled and filled with anything but a "Response to Islamo-Fascism Week."

Filled with contradictory statements and logic that questions the very foundation of their "department," Karen Stein and Gail Faris exemplified what have become the tactics behind the offensive political war on George W. Bush: attack early, often and often incoherently.

As the elite academics often do, leftists Stein and Faris labored through five paragraphs in an effort to lecture the College Republicans on why we are wrong, only to grasp straws all along.

They begin by acknowledging our "stated support of women, gays, Christians, Jews and non-religious people," but go on to argue that "it is bigoted to assume that every Islamic culture is repressive to women," even though we never once argued the position they throw on us. After all, the week is called "Islamo-Fascists" for a reason: there are peaceful Muslims and there are Fascist Muslims.

The left cannot go one paragraph into their attack without smearing and spewing ad-hominem attacks. Stein and Faris then enlighten the College Republicans for two paragraphs, offering their applause for women's groups and quoting Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

What is puzzling is why the authors then quote Elie Weisel who "spoke at a URI commencement several years ago [and] reminded us that the opposite of intolerance is not tolerance, which is too narrow a concept. Rather the opposite of intolerance is respect."

If this and other arguments in their women's studies homily is a response to a week full of events aimed at making aware the intolerance Islamo-Fascists exemplify in targeting and killing people who do not share their ideology, then are Stein and Faris arguing that we should instead respect them? Although they will deny it, their argument is just that.

Stein and Faris author not a response to the week, but a manifesto to the campus: one that turns a blind eye to the atrocities at the hand of Islamo-Fascists and shines a limelight on their foolish and outdated leftist ideology. On the stage that is URI, Stein and Faris prove once again why they and the leftist ideologies for which they stand are "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The events of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week are aimed at giving students a side of the story they do not hear in the classroom: one that should be frightening to us all. Instead of uniting as a campus, URI's cast of leftist all-stars choose to smear College Republicans, not the first group to use the word "Islamo-Fascists" when describing the sect of Islam whose members are bent upon killing you and me. Moderate Muslims in Algeria struggling to form a democratic society were the first to assign this label.

This week College Republicans are involved in a battle similar to what these Algerians were involved in, except ours exists on campus. Like Islamo-Fascists, a group of leftist faculty members and students are not willing to allow opinions or beliefs that are different from their own. Whereas Islamo-Fascists throw bombs, people like Wade, Stein and Faris throw venom in the form of smear and censorship. At the University of Rhode Island, Fascist Week is every week.