Most of the civilian population has fled, as trying to use civilians as human shields does not work against the Pakistani army … [O]utsiders have conquered Bajaur before. Alexander the Great did it 2,500 years ago, and the Mongols did so 700 years ago. But in both cases, conquest was accomplished in the Roman fashion ( "they created a desert and called it peace.") … [T]he army is going old-school on the Taliban, with most of the civilians fleeing, and any resistance getting blasted to rubble. When victory comes, it will be celebrated in a depopulated desert of rubble and empty homes.

Hey, if it worked for Alexander and the Romans, it works for me. I only wish we had the guts to do it ourselves, as our fathers did over Germany and Japan, instead of bribing corrupt third-world gangsters with armies of illiterate peasant boys to do it for us while we strike moral poses and swoon in admiration of our own high-mindedness.

Sovietization of the intelligentsia. … A reader offers a response to my column on the Obama threat to open inquiry in the human sciences:

Derb, your column on the "totalitarian" effects of "cultural Marxism" in the sciences is absolutely spot-on. My only criticism is that you actually understate your case by focusing on the natural sciences. Actually, things are, and have been, much worse than you describe in law, social sciences, and humanities. Natural sciences are the last bastion of the academy where the scientific method can actually be applied, and, and you point out, this bastion is rapidly crumbling.

If you define Western Civilization (as I do) by its adherence to the Socratic method and later, to the scientific method, the future of Western Civilization itself is on the line.

The fact is that feminism, "cultural Marxism," critical race theory, etc. have quite effectively Sovietized the intelligentsia. I need not recite a litany of examples here, but one need only read the "Vagina Monologues" [Must I? — J.D.], review the case of Mary Daly at Boston College, or consider the Larry Summers presidency of Harvard, or the faculty response to the Duke "rape" case to see what is at hand.

I think your statement that "only the government can prevent" the effects of cultural Marxism from destroying the natural sciences should be reconsidered [My reader has misunderstood me here. I argued that only govt. power can prevent the collapse of cultural Marxism — J.D.] with regard to the fact that the government is the chief proponent of cultural Marxism, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Government subsidizes the academy through direct grants, loans, tax exemptions, etc. and the academy has never been called to account for its actions, and it knows this.

We are all used to the fact that since most of the academy is sucking on some government teat or other, politicians can dictate to colleges and universities in such matters as “fairness,” “diversity,” and so on. Yet it never seems to occur to anyone that the government could use its funding power to stop the gross intellectual abuses of cultural Marxism. Imagine, for example, that some Republican administration has issued an executive order that any institution that offered paid employment to Ward Churchill or Kamau Kambon — or for that matter, Bill Ayers — would instantly lose all federal funding. (Note please: That would not violate principles of free speech or academic independence. Colleges would be free to hire those people if they wished to … just not on the taxpaying citizen's dollar.) Can you imagine that? Me neither. In the academy, the Left is completely victorious.

… Just gets worse. This isn’t getting any better. To the contrary.

I’ve been doing what I can to help promote the reissue of Roger Kimball’s classic polemic Tenured Radicals. (BUY IT!) This is the book’s third edition. The first and second were in 1990 and 1998 respectively. Other than adding prefaces, Roger hasn’t had to make a great number of changes. In fact, he has a lifetime earner here: This book will likely be as relevant eighteen years from now, in 2026, as it was in 1990, when it first appeared.

Roger's main concentration is on the Humanities and Arts. I had an e-mail from a regular correspondent, a conservative, who currently toils in those vineyards. As a conservative, of course, my correspondent must maintain deep cover, and has beseeched me to scrub the email clean of all identifying information.

Derb — For years I've used [publisher] Bedford's Literature: The Human Experience in one of my lit classes. It has material ranging from canonical texts like Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" to modern classics like Plath's "Daddy." I was looking at the new 9th edition to see if I wanted to add any readings or if something I used to teach was no longer included, and noticed that there are no less than four new entries expressing pro-Islamic and/or anti-Israel bias:

• Tawfiq Zayyad's "Here We Shall Stay"
• J.D. McClatchy's "Jihad"
• Hanan Mikha'il 'Ashrawi's "From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old"
• Hanan Mikha'il 'Ashrawi's "Night Patrol"

All four selections are inflammatory. The last featured the following discussion/essay question: "Compare and contrast the poems of 'Ashrawi with that of Zayyad. Who do you think is the more effective spokesman for the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli presence? Justify your response."

God help the student who answers, "Neither, because they're Jordanians, and the other Jordanians should have let them in decades ago when the Sheiks sold the land under their own people and then cut and run."

God help the student who says, "Why do you have all these heartwringers about Arabs, but the only poem reflecting Jewish ethnicity is Robert Mezey's materialistic, nagging, straight-from-Woody-Allen stereotype, 'My Mother'?"

God help the student who asks, "Why are we reading this in an English class instead of Keats and Hemingway, or at least Sophocles in translation? Why are my parents paying tuition for this $#!+?"

And no, I don't want equal time for pro-Israel propaganda — but God help the teacher who says, "I never heard of any of these people before! What is all this political muck doing in a lit text?" The teacher's guide refers to Hanan Mikha'il 'Ashrawi's moderation and restraint despite her "exasperation," and lauds her official position in the Palestinian Authority, a body which has never, to my knowledge, put aside their desire for more territoy long enough to take any step towards declaring official statehood for any of the terrritory already under their control. As even Muamar Qaddaffi asked lately, "What is stoppping you?"

Obviously, I wouldn't assign any of this rubbish, but on the off-chance that some students might actually read other selections in their anthologies instead of selling them at buy-back at the end of the term, will they assume I endorse this sort of thing? Can you imagine what happens to some hapless undergraduate who signs up for a particular section mostly because it fits between the required Bio class and soccer practice, finds that his instructor has assigned all four of these, and realizes said instructor will not be satisfied with an analysis of scansion or metaphor … that if nothing else, he's got to cough up a conversion narrative about how the poems opened his eyes to the plight of the oppressed, etc., etc., blah-di-blah-di-blah …

The capacity for abuse, brainwashing, intimidation, silencing during so-called "open discussions" (in a class where participation may be part of your grade so you can't just sit there doodling pictures of the instructor and her visible mustache while waiting for 3:00) is just breathtaking. Of course if anyone protests, they'll be guilty of censorship.

In academia, "Palestine" is the new Vietnam, for people who missed it the first time around but want to feel the same pleasant glow of self-righteous contempt for everybody else. Contempt for those who don't agree, because of course they're pond scum, but also contempt for those who do, because they haven't attended as many activist meetings this week as you have, nyaah-nyaah.

Election fatigue. Oh, the election? [Loud groan.] No, I don’t have much to say, and what I have, I tend to save up for Radio Derb. When I first succumbed to election fatigue, sometime round about last winter, I hoped that I would pass right through it and out the other side, brimming with political excitement as I shot into the October-November zone.

That hasn’t happened. Both major candidates are perfectly terrible to anyone of a conservative temperament; and in any case, my state is a foregone conclusion for Wonder Boy, so even if I could summon up any enthusiasm for John McCain, there’d be no point in my voting. I shall just write in Ron Paul, if they let me.

Career advice. In a Radio Derb broadcast this month, I bemoaned my folly at not having listened to all the beery, whiskery uncles who, back in my adolescence, advised me to “Get a government job, son!” I should have, of course. A reader from the Golden State rubs my nose in it:

Derb — Allow me to comment. I am one of those government employees you talk about. I was not always a government employee. For 25 years, I made a handsome living as a computer programmer until the DOTCOMBOMB and outsourcing took their savage toll. My wife was always a government employee and urged me to become likewise. I resisted her blandishments. I was making big money and putting it away. I was a sucker. She is now retired and I am still working!

After losing my job and pension six years ago, I became a government employee. My reaction was how could I have been so blind for so long?! The private sector has become a vast lie, a minefield where one must carefully consider every step and purse one's lips. You can be banished with a snap of the fingers. I used to work my a** off, 80 hours a week. I now work a precise 40. I used to worry about layoffs and downsizing. No more. I used to worry about my pension. No more. Indeed, I can plan with computer precision the day of my exit from the work force. I shall be 63, my birthday, and retire with Social Security and a very secure pension along with a medical care supplement. Let us be blunt, there shall be two classes of people going forward. Those who can retire and those who can't.

What a fool I was. It was all a vast waste of time. Time that could have been better spent building up pension credits, leading to an even more munificent lifestyle!!!! Oh, it was fun while it lasted but, seriously, I should have been a mailman out of high school!! Like yourself, I have advised my grandchildren accordingly.

Let me be clear, this is a catastrophic development for our country. When the private sector can no longer compete with the public sector, you know that society is on its way out.

This disgraceful election and the concomitant disgraceful financial meltdown spell doom for conservatism and our country. The rallying cry is … Give me that old time Socialism!! At this point, my wife and I are planning to make the most of it and have as much fun as we possibly can for as long as we possibly can. Frankly, nothing else makes sense anymore. The old beliefs, the old gods, the old standards have gone a-glimmering. I now answer the deep questions of the day with a cosmic shrug, a "whatever" and an inquiry as to when the Chargers are playing this Sunday. It is wise not to have opinions in the new America. Opinions are dangerous.

I have visited Philadelphia, the cradle of our freedom. I have been astonished at the modest rooms where the great men of that time gave birth to our country. I think of Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin spinning in their graves. They would be appalled that it has come to this. Ask yourself, would you sacrifice your life, your sacred honor and your fortune for what you see around you today? The answer is self evident. We are a de facto colony of China. It is enough to make you cry.

Well, it’s certainly enough to make me broadcast the following public-service announcement to any adolescent out there who does not, so far as he knows, have any of the following: (A) A trust fund. (B) Extraordinary athletic, thespian, or entrepreneurial talent. (C) A burning desire to work till he drops, at modest wages, for someone else’s enrichment.

Announcement: GET A GOVERNMENT JOB, KID!

Happy Consumer Experience. The miracle is, that private enterprise is not all one great uniform desert of resentment and sabotage. The other day I had a happy consumer experience with a private firm.

I have one of those bathtub showers with a boss that you pull out to start the water flow, and a handle attached that you turn to regulate the temperature. Handle screws into boss; but after years of use the thread wore out and the handle came off. I made a couple of attempts to re-attach it, but it kept coming off and the kids lost it.

Off to the plumbing-supply store with the boss, to see if I could get a replacement. Nope, they didn’t have it and couldn’t get it. They gave me a phone number for Moen, the manufacturer, though, and told me: “They’re very helpful.”