Radical Stalinist chic

Deborah Orin’s New York Post column provides a bit more evidence of the cosmopolitan feeling circulating among the elite American universities and their alumni: “Harvard loves a thug.” Orin writes:

HARVARD University has a bizarre idea of how to advance the education of its grads: Instruct them to bow down to North Korea’s paranoid dictators and show proper “respect” for the Axis of Evil.

It’s the ultimate in radical Stalinist chic – the Harvard Alumni Association’s $636-a-night totalitarian luxury tour of a rogue nation where thousands are deliberately starved to death.

“Demonstrations of respect for the country’s late leader, Kim Il Sung, and for the current leader, Kim Jong Il, are important,” instructs the Harvard Alumni Association’s tour memo.

“You will be expected to bow as a gesture of respect at the statue of Kim Il Sung and at his mausoleum.”

Harvard even tries to pretend that bowing down to thugs is perfectly normal – explaining that it’s because “North Korea, like every country, has its own unique protocols.”

The beauty of “multiculturalism”! Respect for tyrants (of the right, i.e., left, stripe). The notion that resistance to tyrants is obedience to God? How parochial! The culture embodied in the Harvard tour seems to be the one on which Paul Hollander wrote the book. (Courtesy of Lucianne.)

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