True aggression

The dominant story in this country in recent weeks has been college campus protests. Certainly some of the claims of race-based threats and bigotry are valid and worthy of investigation. America’s progressive path toward the founding principle of equality is a jagged one.

However, the legitimacy of the college movements has been undermined by selfish and childish wallowing. By redefining any perceived slight as a “microaggression,” so-called victims can claim they have been made to feel diminished by the purposeful or even unintended actions of others.

The University of California system has issued a list of microaggressions that are to be avoided. The simple notion of asking a person where they are from or where they were born counts for “aggression” because it suggests they are not an American.

It is a tragic coincidence that during this focus on the tender psyche of youth we should be witness to large-scale acts of actual aggression: deliberate, violent and consequential. Suicide bombers and gunman killed at least 129 people and wounded 350 more, 99 seriously, in coordinated attacks around Paris Friday night.

The Islamic State’s homicidal attacks on innocent people enjoying a Friday evening in the City of Light are a bloody reminder of the ongoing war between civilization and barbarian Islamic fanaticism. ISIS is so perverse than even Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri denounced it in 2014.

ISIS said Paris was targeted because it is “the capital of prostitution and obscenity.” This from an organization that, according to the New York Times, “has instituted sex slavey and a theology of rape in areas under its control.”

A common ISIS approach when it takes control of a village is to separate the men and women, execute the men and enslave the adolescent girls for sex, all the while contending that the religious teachings of the Quran justify their actions.

Yet ISIS twists logic to justify attacks on innocent Parisians.

French President Francois Hollande correctly identified the attacks on his capital city as “an act of war,” promising to be merciless in its increasing effort to crush ISIS.  Leaders of many other countries have pledged their support of France.

As President Obama said, this is not an isolated attack on one city; this is “an attack on the civilized world.”  And it is the civilized world and all its faiths that must stand united against the blood-thirsty madness of the Islamic State.

What happened in Paris is reality.  This is what an actual threat, carried out to its violent conclusion, actually looks like. For people who value freedom and liberty, which are essential to the human spirit, Paris and other great cities of the world are safe zones, places to be celebrated and preserved.

Even Nazi Major General Dietrich von Choltitz, the commander of Paris in 1944, could not follow through on Hitler’s orders to destroy the city rather than leave it intact for the Allied liberation.

It’s been 14 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by Islamic radicals.  American college students taking part in the current protests probably don’t remember it. Last week the University of Minnesota Student Association rejected a resolution calling for an annual moment of silence in recognition of the September 11th attacks.

MSA representative and Director of Diversity and Inclusion David Algadi spoke against the proposal.  “The passing of this resolution might make a space that is unsafe for students on campus even more unsafe,” said Algadi, “Islamophobia and racism fueled through that are alive and well.”

Anyone interested in witnessing what is truly alive and well should visit the angry and heartbroken city of Paris. Bypass the traditional tourist locations and instead go to Stade de France, the Bataclan theater, Le Petit Cambrodge restaurant and Le Carrion bar, and bear witness to the most graphic definition of aggression.

Now that would be an education.





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