GODWIN'S LAW BE DAMNED. CalPundit links to Quaker in a Basement (o roll dem blogs!) on Republican legislators' plans to enforce "intellectual diversity" in Colorado schools via gummint action. These plans were allegedly inspired by David "Tell the Black People to Stop Staring at Me" Horowitz.

As I noted back in ought-two (scroll down to November 14), Daniel Pipes has floated a similar plan, by which "outsiders (alumni, state legislators, non-university specialists, parents of students and others)" would "take steps to create a politically balanced atmosphere, critique failed scholarship, establish standards for media statements by faculty and broaden the range of campus discourse." This, Pipes reasoned, is made necessary by a preponderance of "American Academics Who Hate America" -- and the need is made more pressing because "we are at war."

CalPundit and the Quaker are good on the legal problems with this approach (not to mention its rank hypocracy), but a strong word should be raised about the moral issue of sending flying squads of "outsiders" to monitor and correct ideological balance in colleges and universities. I know we've been cautioned by various Basil Fawltys not to mention the War but this really is perilously close to Nazi shit:

The first indications of an emerging cultural policy in Germany were barely noticed by the general public. On April 13, 1933 the German Student Association posted a twelve point "Proclamation" at the entrance doors of the Univerity of Berlin, demanding from the universities a greater sense of responsibility toward the German race, the German language, and German literature...

And:

The Nazification of Germany in the 1930s did not happen overnight. A key part of this Nazification process was the campaign called "Gleichschaltung" -- which means "getting everyone in step." The Nazis announced that a proud, new, patriotic Germany was being born out of pain and danger... For a decade from the late '20s to the late '30s, communists, radicals, progressives and Jews were targeted in the universities and other institutions -- and so were many who defended them. The emergence of a "new normalcy" in the late '30s was a prelude to wider war and greater horrors.

Bringing up the bad boys of Berlin is a blogger no-no, a blowing of one's cool in a hypercool medium. And of course the Nazis weren't asking for diversity, while Pipes and Horowitz seek only a limited outside intervention in the affairs of academia. And it's not the Student Affairs Bureau that would administer the plan between concert bookings and theme nights in the cafeteria. Besides, there's speech codes, and that was the other side. And Horowitz is Jewish, etc.

But fuck it. I say it's fascist and I say the hell with it.