Propaganda, Patriotism, and the War on Terrorism :: Argumentative Persuasive Topics

Propaganda, Patriotism, and the War on terrorist act   On college campuses across the nation, efforts argon being made to silence professors who fall off on students to probe the history of U.S. foreign policy in the effort to regard the September 11th attacks.   Recent articles in The Chronicle of Higher reading report that students have complained to deans about professors critical of U.S. foreign policy, and boards of trustees, deans, and college presidents have drafted resolutions and issued customary statements condemning their views. Professors have been shouted down, received volumes of hate mail and, on some campuses, death threats. In one case, a trustee in public invited a professor to take a hike.   Historically, such attacks on surplus speech have risen sharply in times of content crisis -- precisely when a full range of views is sorely needed. They are especially disturbing on campuses of higher education that should be strongholds of people who admit independent thinking.   The nature of the arguments offered against these dissenting voices are very troubling so too their political effects. The arguments fall into two groups. First, professors are charged with present no concern for the feeling of others they lack taste and judgment they are insensitive, self-indulgent and offend others at a time when emotions are raw. In being so inattentive to their students emotional sensitivities, dissenting faculty collapse the trust students place in them. Now is not the time for critique, only for emotional nurturing, reassurance and national solidarity.   Second, professors are charged with offering excuses for the attacks. Their examination of the bureau the United States may have played in creating conditions that make terrorist acts much likely amounts to a justification of the acts themselves.   There is an emotional tyranny at play here, and its effect is to obstruct processes of understanding that alone will assistant us in our ongoing debate over how to come to name with terrorism. What do I mean by tyranny? In the source instance, we are being told that feelings alone are appropriate now. It is too early, indeed, it is tasteless, to pay off to sort through our role in the complex factors that brought these people to their heinous acts.   But understanding is crucial to wise action, and action, as we see in each mornings news, is most certainly being undertaken in our name. While we are being asked just to feel, the administration and its congressional allies hurry to pass laws that threaten our civil liberties at home, and engage in a immense war effort likely to foster greater resentment abroad.