Familia Americana Article 27: When Moral Clarity Fails
What is happening at our university campuses today is nothing short of deplorable and emblematic of a nation whose citizens have lost their moral compass. Belligerent mobs of “elite” college students are occupying campuses across the country, protesting and building encampments in the name of a cause (anti-Israeli) whose history they poorly understand and in full support of the deadly terrorist organization that leads them: Hamas. From coast to coast – from Portland State University to the University of Texas at Austin, North Carolina Chapel Hill to Columbia University in New York, and at most Ivy League schools – thousands of self-entitled, spoiled, and immature college youths are wreaking havoc on their campuses, harassing and intimidating Jewish students, blocking paths into school buildings, and vandalizing property. They are angry, destructive, and proud to call for the death and destruction of Israel. What have we come to in America?
On October 7, 2023, Hamas committed the second Holocaust known to the Jewish people when they entered Israel and killed over 1,200 individuals, taking more than 200 hostages back to Gaza. Since then, Israel has conducted a military campaign against Hamas and taken the fight directly to the terrorists. Israel has every intention of eradicating Hamas so they never pose an existential threat again. Israel has every right to defend itself.
The events that are transpiring at our universities in support of Hamas should disgust us. The actions of our college students are reminiscent of the rise in Marxist sentiment on university campuses in the 1960s and 1970s. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical leftist student-led organization, engaged in campus protests, vandalized and burned property while demonstrating against the Vietnam War and in support of Marxism and socialist educational initiatives. The SDS were violent and angry, much like our youth today, only our youth are not as astute in world affairs and have lost their moral clarity. The youth of the 60s and 70s understood their cause and the ideology they defended. Today’s college students do not know facts; they are caught up in wanting to belong to a cause, feel useful – like they are making a difference in the world – and are completely misled by forces smarter and more experienced than them.
These shining examples of the “best of the best” use genocidal labels and chants against Jews, including the most well-known “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” If asked to explain their mantra, the agitators cannot identify the river or the sea they are referring to. (The Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In other words, the elimination of Israel from the map.) Ask them to explain an intifada – another one of their battle cries – and they cannot. They can only tell you that they are Hamas. They chant “we are Hamas,” in support of a well-known, decades-old terrorist group that wants the total annihilation of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
College students today are unable to make clear and critical distinctions between what is truth and what is propaganda, what is a terrorist organization and what is a nation fighting for its survival. Absolutely disheartening! Are these America’s future leaders? From the brief interviews some of the agitators have given to the media, many if not all poorly understand their purpose and are ill-informed of Israeli history. Their anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews pacifies their inner activist.
Institutions of higher education and their students are in a free fall of moral and intellectual bankruptcy. As the Daily Wire best put it, “We send them our best and they send back students who don’t believe in moral law but are full of moral outrage. We send them our brightest and they send back 22-year-olds who do not believe in truth and are certain that everyone else is wrong.”
To best root out this cancer that has overtaken our institutions of higher education, we must start attending universities that are well-deserving of our hard-earned money, that know what it takes to form mature, responsible, and well-functioning citizens of tomorrow. Universities must protect the rights granted under the U.S. Constitution and hold students accountable for infringing on the rights of others and breaking the law. They must keep order and promote an environment that fosters educational and personal growth. As a society, we must take responsibility for the weak moral compass of the nation. We must fight to inject God into our lives again and rediscover the great anchor that keeps our paths straight. Moral clarity is lacking in America and only we can rectify the failure. Let’s have the courage to do what is right in spite of the hostility present today. Support Israel, decry anti-Semitism, and uphold our God-given rights to live peacefully and freely in a civil society.
“There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is right.” – Ronald Reagan.
