A last look at people screwing up America

The last few blogs have been a depressing tour through a list of American individuals who have damaged the country, according to Bernard Goldberg. I'm going to speed the process up and spend less time on several more people so I can wrap up this series. I’d like to get onto something a little more uplifting.

Susan Beresford, who headed up the Ford Foundation, comes under attack for the way she pushed this organization to embrace left-wing agendas. Thanks especially to her, Ford has made the nation's colleges and universities a particular target, pushing radical feminism and multiculturalism as well as other left-wing political forms on campus. It also gives a lot of money to antiwar groups. In addition, it filed suits against the detention of captured terrorists at Guantanamo. It also has bankrolled anti-Semitic hate groups. Plus, the Ford Foundation has donated millions of dollars to radical groups attempting to push for more rights for illegal aliens and the massive expansion of bilingualism in United States public schools.

Peter Singer, Princeton University's professor of bioethics, has been called the godfather of animal rights. He believes we should recognize no distinctions between humans and animals and rejects the basic tenet of Judeo-Christian thought that human life is special. According to him, fetuses and impaired human beings are really not people and have lesser moral status than adult gorillas and chimpanzees.

Julian Bond, recent chairman of the NAACP, hijacked the supposedly nonpartisan group and set it down firmly inside the left wing of the Democratic Party. In 2001, when George Bush had become president, Bond noted, "They selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics." During the presidential campaign of 2004, he said, "Republicans want to write bigotry back into the Constitution."

Al Sharpton, the ever-present, self-appointed leader of minorities, naturally is on Goldberg's list. We need to be reminded of Sharpton's background. He was the one who ran to defend Tawana Brawley, a black girl who famously claimed that a gang of white men raped her. Even after it became apparent that she had not been raped, Sharpton went ahead and slandered and defamed one of the innocent men supposedly involved. In addition, he headed up a protest in a tenant/landlord dispute, which ended up with a shootout and a fire in which eight people died. He had urged action and he got it.

Noam Chomsky is a college intellectual known for outrageous statements about the United States. He called America "a leading terrorist state." One time he said, "When you come back from the Third World to the West, the US in particular, you're struck by the narrowing of thought and understanding, the limited nature of legitimate discussion, the separation of people from each other." The Cold War, according to him, was entirely the fault of the United States. He justified Fidel Castro's executions and prisons being filled with dissenters by saying that Cuba was the target of international terrorism. When stories about the Khmer Rouge and its Cambodian genocide came out, Chomsky dismissed accounts of atrocities, claiming they were based on unreliable sources. Even after 9/11, he was quick to point the blame at the "far more extreme terrorism" of United States foreign policy.

Jonathan Kozol is the patron saint of today's powerful liberal educational establishment, having written several books focusing on poor and minority kids. He believes education should not be politically neutral. He's the one who suggested that teachers should use their classrooms to espouse liberal/radical political views. How has that worked out?

Jimmy Carter also makes Goldberg's list. Do I need any explanation here? Let's just say he's very selective about which human rights he champions. He goes after problems in the Philippines, Chile, or South Africa. But for those who live in Communist China, Communist Cuba, Communist Ethiopia, Communist Nicaragua, Communist North Korea, he does not have much interest. In the past he has praised Romania's brutal communist dictator Nicholae Ceausescu, Syria’s dictator al-Assad, and even North Korea's Kim Il Sung. I didn't realize that before the first Gulf War, he actually wrote to members of the UN Security Council, trying to undermine the Bush administration’s policy. Incredible.

I would encourage people to pick up a copy of Goldberg's book, 100 People Who Are Screwing up America. It may be depressing to read, but it's important to realize some of the extreme positions taken by people in our society. We need good answers to some of their charges. To do this, you might consider taking a look at my blogs covering Michael Medved's book The 10 Big Lies about America.