Protest at SMU Targets Bush Library
The likelihood that the George W. Bush presidential library will be located at SMU has not been welcome news for at least one segment of the university community. A letter, dated December 16, from “Faculty, Administrators, & Staff” of the Perkins School of Theology to R. Gerald Turner, president of the Board of Trustees, is now circulating not only on the SMU campus but also among a wider academic community, urging the board to “reconsider and to rescind SMU’s pursuit of the presidential library.”….Texas Monthly has obtained a copy of this letter, which, as you might expect, focuses heavily on objections to Bush’s policies: “We count ourselves among those who would regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their rights, a pre-emptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends….[T]hese violations are antithetical to the teaching, scholarship, and ethical thinking that best represents Southern Methodist University.”
Most colleges and universities would be thrilled to be in the running for a Presidential library. The prestige, credibility, and money that would flow from such an opportunity is something that no college would normally even consider refusing. Of course, this is Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader we’re talking about here…and if there is a less popular politician in this country, I have no idea who it might be.
It appears the SMU community is beginning to recognize that being “blessed” with the siting of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s library might be more of a Scarlet Letter than a boon. When you consider the lies, the propaganda, and the untold carnage visited upon us by Our Glorious and Benevolene Leader: SMU is right to ask itself if this is a President that they want to be known for celebrating.
If the library is built at SMU, one has to ask if it will be an honest potrayal of The Worst President EVER © - the lies, the propaganda, the thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, the young Americans coming home in flag-draped boxes. Or will it be a triumph of propaganda that would make Joseph Goebbels proud?
“Another matter that warrants our attention is that whether it aims to or not SMU will, in the long run, financially profit on the backs of hard-working Americans who feel squashed by policies they’ve now rejected at the polls. Surely it’s not the case that SMU will allow itself to benefit financially from a name and legacy that globally is associated with suffering, death, and political ‘bad faith.’ Taken together, all these issues set decision-making about the Library in a framework of inescapable ethical questions, and remind us of a key imperative adopted by many leading universities around the globe: ‘to be critic and conscience of society.’”
SMU is correct to be asking if it wants to be known as championing The Worst President EVER © . Accepting the siting of this Presidential library should and will be interpreted as SMU’s endorsement of the lies, propaganda, xenophobia, and sheer ignorace and religious/ideological intolerance that has characterized the reign of error of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader. Surely, the SMU community is intelligent enough to grasp the message that siting this library on campus would send to the world.
It would appear that not even a place as reliably and undeniably Conservative as SMU is willing to whitewash this reign of error and ignorance.
In addition to opposing Bush’s policies, the letter writers raise their voices against the purported mission of the library itself. Their concerns are based on a New York Daily News story of November 27, which describes the future library as a $500 million center (the costliest presidential library ever), the purpose of which would be “to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.”
The letter to Turner makes the point that there are “two fundamentally different visions of the Library”: a neutral space for unbiased academic research conducted by scholars, or a conservative think tank and policy institute that engages in legacy polishing and grooms young conservatives for public office.
I may be an unvarnished, foaming-at-the-mouth Librul, but it seems to me that an institution of higher learning has no business being complicit in the whitewashing of the murderous reign of error of The Worst President EVER © . With any luck, Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s library will be relegated to the back parking lot of the Texarkana School of Beauty and Bartending or the Waco Recreational Psychopharmacology Research Institute.
Then again, with any luck, there will be a jail cell in a federal prison with Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader’s name on it. THAT would certainly be a fitting location for his Presidential library, don’tcha think??
