Stefan Eilts’s perspective (“Mea Culpa: The Modern Student Motto” Sept. 18, p. 9) certainly fulfills all the requirements of a Boston University political opinion column. It’s in coherent English; it has a central idea (liberal college students feel bad their ancestors hurt and killed other probably darker-skinned ancestors) and it’s about 800 words. However, the author’s scope of the effects of dreaded “cultural relativism” is a tad shortsighted and more than a bit insulting to its intended audience.
A more curious look into American moral conundrums of the past neither denigrates the name of the nation nor does it represent the views of a gleeful, flag-bashing, Zinn- and Roots-fueled orgy, no matter how much the author wishes to frame it as such. He instead should be proud of the achievements of Anglo-American culture. Yet Mr. Eilts seems to be personally offended by his fellow students’ probing questions and doubts about American achievement. Isn’t American democracy’s greatest achievement the right to question a democracy itself?
I do understand the exasperation. I, too — like many of my fellow GWMCs (Guilty White Middle Classers) — feel more than a pang of regret for some of the more brutal actions our American forefathers took in the course of forging today’s nation. However, rather than flagellate for flagellating’s sake, I choose to study the actions of the past so that in my own choices I may avoid similar consequences.
Finally, I must take objection to the assertion that relativism led to “liberals [sitting] on the fence during the Cold War.” Presidents Kennedy, Truman, Johnson and any number of Democrat leaders from the 1950s until at least the 1970s were desperate to avoid being painted as soft on Communism, and, as a result, made a grand number of decisions to lead the charge against the Soviets. To subtly infer that protesting or draft-dodging students in the Vietnam era represented some sort of anti-American fifth column, and to try to link them to students today with al-Qaida, is irresponsible and wrongheaded. It fails to differentiate between dissent and defeat and insults the number of Americans who choose to view political events with an open mind, free of judgments from a left-wing or right-wing perspective. They are “free men,” which, in Latin, led to that phrase “liberal,” as Mr. Eilts so pointedly remarks. But hey, who am I to criticize? It’s all relative, right?
Sean Sullivan
CAS ’07
Former DFP Columnist
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
