Robertson lashes out at professors

[BobcatJH]

The Good Reverend is at it again. When he's not wishing foreign leaders, Supreme Court justices or entire cities dead, Pat Robertson fills the airwaves by attempting to force his fringe ideology onto America. Tuesday morning, Robertson's target was college professors.

Promoting David Horowitz's latest book, an anti-academia screed, Robertson was guilty of the worst kind of religious right projection: Accusing others of things he and his followers are guilty of.

Robertson called professors radicals. Propagandists. Individuals who "don't want anybody else except them." People who brainwash the vulnerable and beat up their opponents. No blacker a pot has ever called a kettle names.

Here's what Robertson said on Tuesday morning's edition of "The 700 Club":

ROBERTSON: Ladies and gentleman this is a fascinating book. If you want to, you'd better take your blood pressure medicine before you read it, but it's "The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America" and that's just a short list of the 30-40,000 of them, they're like termites that have worked into the woodwork of our academic society and it's appalling. This is available at CBN.com and book stores everywhere, and you really ought to read it and be informed.

TERRI: It’s interesting that so many conservatives haven't seen this because decades ago we were told that infiltrating education was the way to take over the country, we should have been on alert.

ROBERTSON: They gamed it, these guys are out and out communists, they are radicals, you know some of them killers, and they are propagandists of the first order and they don't want anybody else except them. That's why Regent University for example is so terrifically important and why we're setting up an undergraduate program that hopefully will see shortly 10,000 students, and then from there 250,000 because you don't want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don't want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission. Ahhh! "The Professors", read it.

If you made it all the way through that passage without vomiting in your mouth, I congratulate you. If you did, however, you surely noticed Robertson accusing professors of things normally reserved for the reverend and his followers. Robertson calling anyone "radicals," "propagandists" or people who "don't want anybody else except them" is irony of the first order. We're talking, after all, about the same man who, on more than one occasion, has threatened cities and wished for the deaths of sitting Supreme Court justices. Where I come from – and where most Americans come from – I call that radical.

Robertson, after yelling at the man in the mirror whom he confused for a professor, claimed without proof that professors were assaulting their opponents. He didn't cite a case. But I can. Remember Kansas University professor Paul Mirecki? Mirecki, an outspoken critic of Christian fundamentalism who had until recently intended to teach intelligent design as mythology, was assaulted in December by two men who had been following him in a pickup truck.

Mirecki was driving to breakfast when the truck began closely following him. He stopped, thinking it would pass. It didn't. "They got out, and I made the mistake of getting out," he said. The beating, which included punching, kicking and the victim being beaten with a metal object, began almost instantly. Mirecki later said that his attackers "made references" to his recent notariety. "I didn't know them," he said, "but I'm sure they knew me."

Interesting. And Robertson thinks professors are the radicals who assault their opponents. Here's the scary part: People like Robertson are in charge. Fundamentalist Christians run the federal government. They dominate the airwaves. Churches themselves control entire communities. What's worse, people of Robertson's ilk also come armed with a remarkably insane persecution complex. All of this tells me that things are only going to get worse.

Fundamentalists like Robertson are rather contradictory. These "pro-life" Christians bomb abortion clinics. These "compassionate" Christians blockade Terri Schiavo's hospice, preventing a grieving woman from wishing her dying grandfather farewell. These "loving" Christians hate certain Americans for simply being born a certain way. And many of the things the Robertsons of the world say are far more radical than anything you'll hear them critique those "freedom-hating terrorists" for.

Here's the question Robertson hasn't yet answered: Where does it stop? Mirecki was beaten for offering a dissenting opinion. What's next? When will those putting people like Mirecki in the hospital put someone else in a grave? Robertson's followers have heeded the threats he and others have made in the past, menacing judges and doctors alike. One would be foolish to think his latest warnings won't be similarly heeded.

[MichiganVote]

1. A little short on cash again this week I see..hmmm

[DeadManInc]

2. Robertson is a colostomy bag.

I can't believe poeple even listen to him.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Link4U and others too.....

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003486X/sr=8-1/qid=1142990415/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-5061847-1492028?%5Fencoding=UTF8



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[Iris]

4. Yeah. I remember the first time I got beat up by a liberal professor. . .

I just cowed in submission after that.

[patrice]

5. Think of the teachers, without whom you very possibly would have gone

crazy at one point or another when you were "young". There are teachers who to me were the only ones who understood anything at all about me, a long time ago.

Robertson needs to tell us exactly who he is making these accusations about and what basis he has in his personal experience for making this bitchy gossip about others.

[mike_c]

6. no no-- Robertson is spot on this time....

I kick the crap out of students who don't accept communism by their third semester, and few who show the least thread of skepticism survive their junior years. I pummel 'em with brain washing techniques I learned from Russian psychologists. They're little liberal robot comrades when my colleagues and I are done with them. And the best part is that most of America is clueless about this! Bwahahahaha! Soon we will rule the world!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

8. Nice Perle Scooby snack.

[AnnieBW]

7. I Wonder

If he had my professor for my last grad school class? I shouldn't complain too much - he gave me an A-. :D

[DeepModem Mom]

9. Excellent post, BobcatJH -- welcome to DU!

Recommended, and added to my Journal list of recommended DU posts.

[petronius]

10. I'm really dropping the ball - I haven't beaten or killed anyone this week

However, it is Spring Break, so I guess I can make up for it next week...

Sounds as though Pat is setting up his own university - I hope he's not too disappointed when he doesn't get that quarter of a million students.

[noonwitch]

12. Pat's had his own university for some time-but all graduate study

He's expanding Regents by adding an undergraduate program.

Personally, this is how I think people who don't like public programs should respond-by building their own. If christian groups don't like the movies being put out there, they can make their own. Same with schools, music, books, etc.

[petronius]

14. I didn't know he had a school, but it's not surprising

You are right of course about people developing alternative institutions when their needs aren't being met by what is available, with the caveat that these institutions need to be held to the same academic standards as any other if the rest of us are to take them at all seriously. Particularly when it comes to scientific topics (or history, anthropology, sociology, or any other field where religious views conflict with empirical observation), I'm not willing to give 'alternative' perspectives equal weight just because there is a religious basis for a given position. Personally, I would view a diploma from Regents with a great deal of skepticism, unless the degree was in Robertsonian theology...

[martymar64]

16. Have you ever heard Fundie music?

Marrone! What crap it is. I'm not talking about Gospel as written and sung by African-American christians, that stuff is uplifting even to this atheist. But the music put out by the fundy mega-church crowd is pure-dee unadulterated crap! It makes Pat Boone sound like the Sex Pistols, it's so dull and devoid of soul.

[Dulcinea]

11. I keep waiting for Pat Robertson to be sizzled by a lightning bolt.

Preferably on the 700 Club.

[gratuitous]

13. Why is Robertson aiding and abetting murder?

What, you say? The good reverend, an accessory to murder? Here are his own words from the post: "These guys are out and out communists . . . some of them killers." Apparently Pat has some information the police don't about professors murdering people, and instead of going to the police, he approaches his audience with his hand out for more money.

What is a good citizen to think?

[noonwitch]

15. I went to a school that had a good mix of professor's ideologies

The econ prof who spent many hours after class explaining theories to me in ways I could understand-a conservative.
The literature professor who compared Odysseus to Captain Kirk-a liberal.
The history teacher who taught that the american revolution was actually unpopular among most colonists, that most wanted to keep loyal to Britain-a conservative.
The history teacher that taught that we handled the Vietnam War wrong, but still should have fought the communists there-a liberal.

I also had a liberal theology professor who used to get the baptists and catholics fighting during class, and sit back and listen to the fireworks. That was a fun class for everyone involved, conservative, liberal or somewhere in between. I wrote my term paper about whether the Bible was truly the literal Word of God-I concluded that it was divinely inspired, but not perfect. We had to present our papers to the class and let our peers pick them apart. I did well, my peers liked my arguments.

Most of my social work profs were liberals. Not too many conservatives go into the field, it doesn't pay all that much.

But the rest of the programs had a mix of philosophies. We had the hippie psych prof who was once personal friends with BF Skinner (Dr. Roger Ulrich). We had the conservative psych prof who did the rat-lab class. They were all good teachers.

A good education will have teachers from a variety of backrounds and philosophies. A conservative education, with no liberal arguments, is not a good one, either. That kid will lose one argument to a liberal and have his entire world view fall apart, because no one ever challenged it before.

[LisaLynne]

17. And I don't suppose any of Robertson's followers ...

would find it suspicious that this man, who has his own school and who might want more students he could take tuition money from, would be talking about how horrible and dangerous is it both physically and spiritually for their children to go to a college or university that he doesn't own ... :eyes:

[Bake]

18. Every time he opens his mouth he sticks his foot in it!

I love it!! I wish him long life and a live microphone. Let people continue to hear the utter bullshit that spews from his piehole, and sooner or later they'll wake up!

Bake