Graduation Speeches

In the next couple weeks many students will attend their graduations with proud parents and family members. For many who are not President Bush- or conservative-haters, the graduation day will be slightly marred by a liberal graduation speaker who will bash our government leaders and ideals.

Last year, my wife and I were proud parents of children who received their degrees from Cornell and Harvard Universities. The invited speakers were former President Bill Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan [pictured], respectively. Naturally their addresses included derogatory inferences about conservative principles and people.

Both messages were that the United States needs to defer to the UN and its dictates. They opined that negotiation is the only answer to conflict and commented on a whole bunch of things that the Bush administration should do (without ever mentioning it by name). The irony is that both Clinton and Annan, when in power, accomplished almost nothing doing the things that they advocate. The world became demonstrably much more dangerous during their tenure.

“If you live in a world where you cannot kill, occupy or imprison all your actual or potential adversaries, you have to make a deal,” Clinton stated. “The only sensible solution is a cooperative one across the lines that divide.” It sounds great, but as Ann Coulter once said, “For liberals, history always seems to begin when they get up in the morning.”

Clinton ignored the historical record that shows that virtually every great conflict in the world was settled, not by negotiation, but by one side having the power to impose its position on its adversary. “Peace in our time” is what Chamberlain assured the world to delirious diplomatic acclaim when he cut a deal with Hitler. That only resulted in perhaps 50 million people dying in WWII.

Has Clinton not noticed that the radical Islamic terrorists have no interest in negotiating? They have made it clear that they will kill anyone who does not do what they want.

Kofi Annan said, with great pomposity, that “all great leaders understood” the need to defer to the UN on international conflict matters. This was a clear reference to President Bush not waiting for another UN resolution to go after the terrorists in Iraq planning to kill or destroy more of anything American. And Annan got cheers for this statement! When has the UN ever prevented a major conflict?

This is the same Kofi Annan who was the director of peacekeeping operations in Rwanda and Burundi in 1994 when close to one million people were slaughtered, mostly innocent women and children. According to Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN troops in Rwanda at the time, he sent a fax to Kofi Annan detailing the imminent genocide. Annan’s response was to do nothing except share his information with the French. The French were helping the Hutu extremists who committed the genocide.

Less than 18 months later, Annan received the critical backing of the French to become the UN’s first African secretary-general. Annan had the audacity to bring up the genocide in his speech at Harvard saying that there “wasn’t the will in the UN to stop the carnage.” He was the one who prevented the UN peacekeeping forces from stopping the genocide!

Annan did not mention the biggest bribery scandal in the history of the world going on under his nose at the UN, i.e., the billions of dollars of bribes paid by Saddam Hussein, through the oil-for-food program, to a bunch of diplomats in the UN, France, Germany, Russia and other countries to vote against the US policy of neutralizing the terrorist in Iraq.

And of course, he said later that he knew nothing of his son and aides profiting from the scandal. UN officials facilitated Saddam’s ability to buy weapons instead of feeding his countrymen. And this is the guy and organization to whom we should pay homage and invite to speak to graduating students? Give me a break!

My modest suggestion is that you take along your video camera and record what the graduation speakers have to say and then report to as many communication outlets as possible what they said. If enough of us do that, maybe university officials will be made uncomfortable enough to show more ideological balance in their choice of invited speakers. Accuracy in Academia and Campus Report Online are interested in your experiences.

Should you be so fortunate to be attending a graduation or graduating in the next few weeks, let us know your observations of the speakers at your graduation. And make sure that the trustees and alumni know of your observations. This is how we get positive change.

James F. Davis is the president of Accuracy in Academia.