Post by MARIO on Jun 6, 2005 20:43:33 GMT -8
Leftists Indoctrinating High School Students
David Horowitz
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Through a serendipity, I was able, just before the Memorial Day Weekend, to invite myself to a propaganda offensive against the Iraq war conducted by the anti-American left at Pacific Palisades High School. It was an experience that revealed more than I was happy to know about the state of our public school classrooms.
The in-school event was a production of the Pali Hi English Department, whose plan was to corral 300 students for an hour and forty-five minute lecture by an anti-war speaker from "U.S. Tour of Duty," a group that works with Medea Benjamin's Code Pink in active obstruction of America's war effort.
The outside organizer was a former member of the Pali Hi English Department named Marcie Winograd, who is president of an organization called "Progressive Democrats" and a member of Palisadians for Peace, an organization composed of what appear to be retired Communist Party members and activists involved in the fellow-traveling left.
I was at the event, which was held during school hours between 10 a.m.and noon, by happenstance. I had been contacted a week earlier by Jeff Norman, the organizer for U.S. Tour of Duty, who wanted to know if I would debate a former CIA technician named Ray McGovern, who had apparently gone over to the other side.
The venue – a Venice church – did not appeal to me since I knew the audience would be composed of left-wing activists whom I have reason to know are intolerant, obnoxious and nasty when gathered in a public setting, and can be violent as well. I asked Norman, who was quite accommodating, to find another, more hospitable venue on the west side or in the Valley.
McGovern, who resides in Virginia, was in California only to visit his son, so there was little flexibility in the time frame. It came down to one or two dates, and Norman was having trouble securing a new venue on such short notice. Then I received an e-mail that Marcie Winograd had sent to McGovern, copying me – whether inadvertently or not, I do not know. The e-mail referred to another event she had set up at Palidsades High School for a captive audience of high school students.
I knew just what they had in mind, and didn't like it at all. Here I was crusading nationally to take politics out of college classrooms and these leftists were planning an indoctrination session for 13- to 16-year-olds in high school. I sent an e-mail to McGovern (who had appeared as a genial and accommodating fellow in his previous communications to me). I suggested that this would be an acceptable venue from my point of view if he wanted to hold our debate there.
McGovern agreed. He even suggested that our encounter should be formulated as a friendly discussion rather than a debate, to which I agreed. I proposed that the topic should be "How should we look at the war in Iraq?" Before I heard back from him, I received an e-mail from Marcie Winograd saying she wanted the topic to be: "The U.S. government should rapidly terminate its occupation of Iraq. Agree. Disagree. Qualify."
This e-mail indicated that there was a precise political agenda to the event, which was confirmed the following week when Marcie Winograd and Progressive Democrats and Palisadians for Peace organized two actions. The first was to descend on the offices of Democratic Representative Jane Harman and hector her for not signing Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution that we should withdraw immediately from Iraq.
READ THE REST:
www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/6/204740.shtml
David Horowitz
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Through a serendipity, I was able, just before the Memorial Day Weekend, to invite myself to a propaganda offensive against the Iraq war conducted by the anti-American left at Pacific Palisades High School. It was an experience that revealed more than I was happy to know about the state of our public school classrooms.
The in-school event was a production of the Pali Hi English Department, whose plan was to corral 300 students for an hour and forty-five minute lecture by an anti-war speaker from "U.S. Tour of Duty," a group that works with Medea Benjamin's Code Pink in active obstruction of America's war effort.
The outside organizer was a former member of the Pali Hi English Department named Marcie Winograd, who is president of an organization called "Progressive Democrats" and a member of Palisadians for Peace, an organization composed of what appear to be retired Communist Party members and activists involved in the fellow-traveling left.
I was at the event, which was held during school hours between 10 a.m.and noon, by happenstance. I had been contacted a week earlier by Jeff Norman, the organizer for U.S. Tour of Duty, who wanted to know if I would debate a former CIA technician named Ray McGovern, who had apparently gone over to the other side.
The venue – a Venice church – did not appeal to me since I knew the audience would be composed of left-wing activists whom I have reason to know are intolerant, obnoxious and nasty when gathered in a public setting, and can be violent as well. I asked Norman, who was quite accommodating, to find another, more hospitable venue on the west side or in the Valley.
McGovern, who resides in Virginia, was in California only to visit his son, so there was little flexibility in the time frame. It came down to one or two dates, and Norman was having trouble securing a new venue on such short notice. Then I received an e-mail that Marcie Winograd had sent to McGovern, copying me – whether inadvertently or not, I do not know. The e-mail referred to another event she had set up at Palidsades High School for a captive audience of high school students.
I knew just what they had in mind, and didn't like it at all. Here I was crusading nationally to take politics out of college classrooms and these leftists were planning an indoctrination session for 13- to 16-year-olds in high school. I sent an e-mail to McGovern (who had appeared as a genial and accommodating fellow in his previous communications to me). I suggested that this would be an acceptable venue from my point of view if he wanted to hold our debate there.
McGovern agreed. He even suggested that our encounter should be formulated as a friendly discussion rather than a debate, to which I agreed. I proposed that the topic should be "How should we look at the war in Iraq?" Before I heard back from him, I received an e-mail from Marcie Winograd saying she wanted the topic to be: "The U.S. government should rapidly terminate its occupation of Iraq. Agree. Disagree. Qualify."
This e-mail indicated that there was a precise political agenda to the event, which was confirmed the following week when Marcie Winograd and Progressive Democrats and Palisadians for Peace organized two actions. The first was to descend on the offices of Democratic Representative Jane Harman and hector her for not signing Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution that we should withdraw immediately from Iraq.
READ THE REST:
www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/6/204740.shtml