The Confessions of Neo Don Quiote and a Decidedly Over-the-Hill Holden Caulfield

Reading my hometown newspaper, I was elated to learn that our lone high school here in Piedmont ranks near the top in the nation in its percentage of students accepted to Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. Contemplating our class of ’02 sons and daughters now attending their first classes at many of the country’s best colleges and universities, I also paused to worry what our educators will be teaching them during their most important right of passage.

As an example of why I worry, consider a new book by Eric Foner, the esteemed professor at Columbia University, where it was reported widely last October, the President of the ABC News division, David Weston, gave a speech, without a subsequent protest from a single faculty member, stating that he “had no opinion as to whether the Pentagon were not “…a legitimate target for the terrorists to attack”.

As background, Mr. Foner is possibly the nation’s most decorated living college history professor, a past president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians. He is the poster boy for the well-tenured, education establishment. In a recent review of Foner’s book, by a Mr. Radosh, a Hudson Institute fellow, one learns that “…he (Foner) is one of the foremost proponents of radical history, a movement that is allied with post-modernism, both euphemisms of choice for Marxist and neo-Marxist historians. A Foner quote that I would hope will forever dog him references 9-11. He actually said “I’m not sure which more frightening; the horror which engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating from the White House.” Asserting that your are more afraid of measured words of military preemption to the indelible images of people leaping from hundred-story infernos, how does this twisted intellect command respect? More »