Patriot Prefers Picking Garbage to Insulting Journalism

This Tuesday, Joshua Kaufman, who happens to be a Crimson columnist, used The Crimson to attack and insult me and other students who are listed on the masthead of the Peninsula magazine (Naming Names: Peninsula's Fascists, October 15, 1996). Since he apparently felt it was all right to publicly call me a fool and a fascist for the crime of being on the staff of a student publication, I think he should hear a few things I have to say.

Mr. Kaufman, I have never met you and sincerely hope I never will. For the record, I did not write the Peninsula article in question, although I agree with some of the points it makes. Nevertheless, you dare use The Crimson to call me names that you would never have the guts to use in a face-to-face conversation. You decided to show everyone that you lack both elementary decency and a sense of humor, by insulting the entire Peninsula staff for an article that ridicules your politically correct sacred cows (and sacred professors). You write that you "are proud to be included on [Peninsula's] enemies list." Indeed, you should be: being considered an enemy implies being a worthy opponent. I, for one, am sorry that the author of the Peninsula article chose to put you on that list. After reading your so-called editorial, the only thing I feel for you is contempt.

You dare accuse Peninsula staffers of anti-Semitism because of one article's attack on professors like Alan Dershowitz and Stephen Jay Gould. I have met plenty of anti-Semites while living in Russia, a country where being Jewish was almost a crime against the state, and I deny you the right to use the sufferings of our people to lend legitimacy to your whining. I am sure that if you ever came face to face with a real anti-Semite, you would turn tail and run, as pseudo-intellectuals like yourself have done all over the world. Gould and Dershowitz are attacked in the article not because of their Jewishness, but because of their pronouncements (such as Professor Gould's implied stand against religious belief) and their actions (such as Professor Dershowitz's participation in the defense of O.J. Simpson).

You dare denounce us as "freakish fascists" because of Peninsula's refusal to condone the actions of stormtroopers from the Strategic Offense Society (who twice disrupted scheduled classes at this University) and the moral laxity of the Harvard administration (who let the offenders go without even a slap on the wrist and recently rewarded their parental organization, the BGLSA, with office space). You obviously have no idea what a fascist is; pray to God you never have to find out. You dare accuse me of "marching under Stars and Stripes while eschewing the basic values this country stands for" for exercising my Constitutional right to freedom of speech. I shudder to think what your see as our "basic values;" they obviously have nothing to do with freedom or with decency.

You are deluded if you think that calling me and other Peninsula staffers "reactionaries" will somehow make our position illegitimate. This great nation was founded by wise reactionaries like James Madison, who wrote the Constitution to protect us against innovative power-mongers and their diseased ideologies, which in our century have led other nations down the road to gas chambers and prison camps. You are wrong if you think that publishing my name and House affiliation will scare me into silence; I am proud to be a patriot and a conservative, and have never made a secret of my political beliefs. And you are wrong if you think that I "long to become a part of' your so-called "virtuous elite" (apparently composed of yourself, a few Harvard affiliates and a crooked politician, with some SOS members thrown in for muscle). I do not. In fact, I would rather pick garbage for a living.

Come to think of it, picking garbage is clean and honest work compared to the kind of journalism you practice. --John Appelbaum '97