Roosevelt University's Experiment in Stalinism: the Ordeal of Professor Robert Klein Engler

From Kathy Shaidle today, there is news of a Stalinist Resurgence in both America and Canada.

The American resurgence features lefty Roosevelt University in Chicago.  Perhaps Roosevelt is not a Marxist think-tank, but if it isn't, you could have fooled me.  Roosevelt recently fired one of its professors, Robert Klein Engler, for telling a joke in class. The joke was relevant to the class discussion and was told to make a point.  Here's the joke that ended Engler's employment (and possibly his entire career):

A group of sociologists did a poll in Arizona regarding the state’s new immigration law. Sixty percent said they were in favor, and 40 percent said, ‘No hablo Ingles.’

One student complained to the Roosevelt administrators, and Engler was formally accused of "harassment."  The administrators of Karl Marx Roosevelt University informed Engler that he was being investigated for harassment, but never told him why or provided any facts to allow him to defend himself.  He was then fired for refusing to cooperate with the investigation.  Engler writes of his frustration with the unexplained charges and reason for his firing:

For months I practically begged Roosevelt University officials to provide me with at least some clue as to the nature of the “harassment complaint” lodged against me. I couldn’t imagine what it might be, but thought I at least had a right to know what someone was alleging.

But for months the University ignored my pleas.

On August 6, 2010, Mr. Maly notified me by e-mail that I was fired from the University. He claimed I wasn’t cooperating with an investigation. This was beyond absurd. For months the University stonewalled my attempts to learn even the most basic details of the allegation against me.

Engler then hired a lawyer and has filed suit against Roosevelt University.  It was only then, two months later, that he learned the reason for the University's action against him.  Professor Robert Engler has a blog here, giving the details of his experience.

Engler should discover the name of the student who filed the complaint and sue him too.  Ruin the little stooge's life, as only a lawsuit can do.  Accuse him of libel and a violation of Engler's "human rights."  Make an example of him for the rest of the Marxist marinated puppets who pose as college students in America today.  UPDATE:  The student has identified herself.  She is quoted in the Roosevelt Torch:

Cristina Solis, a student in the class, filed a written complaint with department chair Michael Maly after Engler told a joke in class that she found to be highly offensive. The joke pertained to non-English speakers in Arizona. Solis thinks that the professor's termination was fair, and says if she had known that the professor would be fired as a result of her complaint, it would not have affected her decision.

No doubt Solis treasures her power to end careers, tarnish reputations and ruin lives.  Power can be so addictive and satisfying.  She has leftism to thank for this, and the left's firm control of the university.  Heady stuff, hey Cristina?    I wonder how Solis would feel about becoming a defendant in a lawsuit for defamation?  Let's hope she finds out.

Mark Steyn writes more about this Stalinist travesty here.  He also discusses a similar travesty in Canada regarding a stand up comic, Guy Earle.  Canada has taken a sharp turn towards totalitarianism in making free speech illegal in Canada -- illegal, that is, if it hurts the feelings or offends any member of a leftist-anointed, specially protected group -- like Muslims, gays, feminists, "transgendered" kooks and other assorted leftists.  Canada's Stalinist law is onerous in that one's life can be ruined by an innocent remark, dragged through a special Canadian court, and heavily fined.

Guy Earle came under the authority of this kangaroo court when he was harrassed by a couple of drunken lesbians during a stand up comic routine at a club.  Earle answered the drunks and, in the process, offended them.  They filed charges, alleging "homophobic remarks" and now Earle's career has come to a halt.  No one will hire him, fearing trouble by the Stalinist "Human  Rights" Court of Canada.  Earle feels that his life has been irreparably damaged and he awaits his trial in a state of deep depression.  Steyn gives more details of this travesty at his website here.

The Left's control of the university in America, and of free speech in Canada, is a preview of what's to come in our federal government of the future.  And it isn't pretty.

Hat tip:  Five Feet of Fury

Mark Steyn on "Mollifying Muslims and Muslifying Mollies"

Mark Steyn is right on the money (as usual) in describing our psychological need to appease Muslims.  He writes in his article "Mollifying Muslims, and Muslifying Mollies":

Take this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the President of the United States to denounce him, and the Secretary of State, and the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the western world feel they have to weigh in.

Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama's famous "teaching moments"? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the President, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where's the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones' First Amendment rights?

Read it all here.

Islam is the Source of Terrorism, Abroad and at Home, and We Need to Deal With It

Mark Steyn has a must read article today, about the Fort Hood massacre, the fatal attributes of Islam and our inability to deal with unpleasant truths.  His article title:  Multicultural Illusions Kill - No Strategy to Defend Against Ideology.

An ABC pundit quoted an army officer's wife on the capture of the Fort Hood terrorist:  "I wish his name was Smith."  Steyn responds:

What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man.

But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism”. But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam” from non-radical Islam. 

Steyn doesn't come out and say it plainly, but the facts he quotes lead to the only possible conclusion:  the enemy of civilization is Islam.  The source and promoter of terrorism is Islam.  This ideology may lie buried in the psyche of westernized Muslims and incubate there, only to erupt in violence at some future date, unexpectedly, in what has been called "sudden jihad syndrome."  And we need to start developing strategies to deal with it.

Read it all here.

Mark Steyn Disses "A Grown-Up Christmas List"

Mark Steyn ridicules the new popular Christmas song, "A Grown-Up Christmas List," and just in time. This annoying song always makes my gorge rise when I hear it whining out of my radio speakers.

The "grown-up Christmas list" doesn't include a new X-Box, or Daisy BB gun, or anything fun at all. It is really a very liberal list of impractical and impossible pipe dreams, more designed to provide the singer with moral posturing and precious posing. This is a "grown-up" Christmas list? I don't think so. It sounds more like the platform of the Democratic Party.

The words are below. Warning: Overly specious content, may cause nausea in some conservatives.

Grown-up Christmas List
Music by David Foster Lyric by Linda Thompson Foster

Do you remember me I sat upon your knee
I wrote to you With childhood fantasies
Well I'm all grown-up now
Can you still help somehow

I'm not a child But my heart still can dream
So here's my lifelong wish My Grown-up Christmas List
Not for myself But for a world in need

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts

Every man would have a friend
That right would always win
And love would never end

This is my Grown-up Christmas List

The Declaration of Dependence

Mark Steyn's essay today at National Review shows what we can expect from an Obama presidency that is supported by a liberal supermajority in Congress: the end of America as we know it. He quotes Thomas Sowell, saying that it is "the point of no return." Obama's win will be transformative, and deadly, to American exceptionalism, vitality and power. He writes:

I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the “Now what?” questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return”, the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

Read it all here.

Obama: On Remaking the United States

Mark Steyn discusses Barack Obama's desire to remake the United States. Barack Obama, in his victory speech, said:

I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation.

Mark Steyn asks a reasonable question: As for coming together "to remake this great nation," if it's so great, why do we have to remake it?

Steyn then remarks:

Speaking personally, I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there.

Read it all here.

How true that is for all of us who have no intention of going along with the remake. If America becomes just another European-style socialist/pacifist dhimmitude, we're hosed. There is nowhere else to go.

We conservatives are quite determined, however, that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party will not remake America, elected or not. A President is not a dictator and Congress is restricted by laws and the Constitution. We must organize for maximum resistance to the neo-Socialists and their programs.