Activists contribute to democracy
Anna Nussbaum
freshman
I'm writing in response to Erin Fitzpatrick and Michael McCarthy's Oct. 15 letter, "Revive patriotism on this too-liberal campus." Last time I checked, no one, except Fitzpatrick and McCarthy, would classify Notre Dame as too-liberal. On the contrary, it's a school so conservative that my 14-year old brother can't come visit me and can't sleep on my floor for the night, because that would violate parietals. It's a perverse line of logic. The school thinks, without their rules, I or someone else might sleep with him.
Notre Dame is a school where I've heard it frequently expressed among students that homosexuals and people who have consensual pre-marital sex are "evil," and where several male students this year have written letters to The Observer bemoaning the proven relationship between female intelligence and increased ugliness. After I wrote an article earlier this year suggesting students pray and not parade on Sept. 11, I was told by 10 members of the Notre Dame family to go home. There's no room for "liberals" like me in God Country.
But somewhere in Fitzpatrick and McCarthy's over the top mud slinging, among other things calling liberals "bedwetting" commies — and that's a sensitive issue for liberals and commies alike as they're working hard to decrease the bedwetting problem — Fitzpatrick and McCarthy have a point. There are things worth dying for. But what is worth dying for is a different question than what is worth killing for.
And let's not forget that killing and being killed is what we're talking about. Fitzpatrick and McCarthy suggest that we are being called upon as a nation of young people and refusing to heed the call. Who on the Notre Dame campus is being asked to sacrifice? I wish that my country would ask that I sacrifice for something greater than myself. For example, we could be asked to carpool and drive less, thereby decreasing our dependence on foreign oil. Every time you fill your tank, you feed terrorists.
But the really disturbing thing is, unlike in World War II, the Bush administration has asked exactly nothing of me as a civilian, except to shop and "keep the economy rolling." And now students are suggesting that my real patriotic duty lies only in not asking any pesky questions. Don't think about it. Support your government unquestioningly. Go about your life as usual. Buy a new car. Your government will take care of your killing for you.
Signs on campus, though I haven't seen many, saying "No War in Iraq" or "Pray for Peace" should not "degrade" patriotic feelings but increase them. This is what democracy is all about — the free exchange of ideas. The 20 or 30 students who stood on the Fieldhouse Mall last Thursday expressing their obviously unpopular opinions on everything from just war theory to pacifism to the rights of prisoners and University workers, should be applauded. They weren't winning any friends that day. And they weren't "overrunning the traditional values of American society" either.
The First Amendment is a traditional value of American society. We are a country founded on righteous dissent. Whatever you believe, it takes courage to speak your mind publicly especially when your opinions are unpopular. Those students who attend political events just to hear what is being said, who turn off the "Real World" for an hour and step into it, fight apathy and a general ignorance of the world beyond the United States or the dorm. They engage in the conversation and the life of the mind that universities and democracies are supposed to be all about. They not only don't discard their freedom, they exercise it. Go ahead, reason all you want.
Anna Nussbaum
freshman
Farley Hall
Oct. 15
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, October 16, 2002
