Chalmers Johnson's Rant at Pitzer College

Chalmers Johnson, who spoke forty minutes ago at Pitzer College, is one of those far-left progressive types that enjoys throwing around the word "fascist." I attended the meeting, despite a sever throat infection, to bring clarity to the mental morass that is Pitzer College. He misuses the term and tries to use it in the classically Orwellian sense of the term, as anything "undesirable."

Take this instance of supposed militarism. "Whenever you say 'Boeing' to Washington state's two Republican senators, they become blood lusting, Fascist hyenas."

This label, facist, is something Mr. Johnson bandies about quite often. When The Atlantic published a very critical review of North Korean apologist, Bruce Cumings's book, Chalmers Johnson wrote a letter to the Atlantic saying, "The sheer viciousness of B. R. Myers's personal attack on [the left-wing historian of Korea] Bruce Cumings moves the Atlantic ever closer to the standards of fascist journalism."

That he could condemn the simplistic strategy of the Bush Administration, while simultaneously slandering B.R. Myers, a respected Korea expert, would seem hilarious if it weren't so typical of Johnson's supposed scholarship.

In any event, let's get into the meat of the speech. He somehow works himself into a tizzy over the supposed American empire that dominates the world. He also gets worked up over our military spending without ever mentioning that the real threat to our financial solvency is our entitlement culture that takes up almost nearly 70 percent of our federal budget.

He bandies about far left fallacies about how the deficit is supposedly going to turn us into the next Rome and that "future generations" will be paying off the Iraq war debt. None of this is true. That simply isn't how deficits work. You can pay off the interest on a deficit for years, while your economy grows. Of course, that's only if you have pro-growth policies, like the very tax cuts Mr. Johnson so despises.

He has his points -- the U.S. probably shouldn't be in Korea or Okinawa anymore -- but he went on and on about how the U.S. should abandon its foreign policy unilateralism for the U.N. peacekeeping operations, as if those have ever been successful. Rwanda, anyone? He essentially argued that we should prostrate ourselves before the U.N., but failed to mention that the U.N. has its problems. The 40-billion dollar Oil-For-Food program and the failed Iraqi sanctions come to mind...

He encouraged the U.S. to unilaterally disarm and get rid of our land mines, even though those land mines are being used to defend the South Koreans against belligerent North Koreans.

He also blamed 9-11 on America's stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia. He uncritically cites Osama bin Laden to substantiate that claim. Osama bin Laden doesn't hate America for our freedoms, he says, but for our meddlesome behavior.

Curiously when bin Laden tries to overthrow the governments of Sudan or Iraq that isn't commented upon at all.

Unfortunately, Chalmers is just another one of the many U.S.-hating, Republican-bashing far left professors who so often grace Pitzer with their long rants and faulty thinking.

Empires Are Good For Development, Says CMC Eco. Professor

It isn't very politically correct to suggest that colonialism may actually have been good for the countries because of the institutions it brought to the new areas.

In Conde Nast Portfolio.com, Professors Marc Weidenmier of Claremont McKenna College and Kris Mitchener of Santa Clara University found that

belonging to an empire more than doubled trade flows thanks to the benefits of lower transaction costs, trading agreements, currency unions, and sharing a common language.

Of course, I don't think it's coincidence that the nations that share the British view of law and government should be some of the richest in the world. Maybe the Anglosphere is an idea whose time has come?