'Freedom Memorial' shut down by university authorites - 'offensive'
Rick Moran
Yes, I suppose on one level a memorial dedicated to the victims of Communism depicting a gulag on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall might be offensive - especially if it serves as a reminder that the left excused that sort of thing for 50 years. It might be very uncomfortable indeed if such a memorial triggered memories of dismissing the evil of Communism in the name of "peace."
Well, the students at Washington University in St. Louis had no such illusions. However, their depiction of a gulag complete with prisoners and guards proved too much for university authorities to stomach. They proclaimed the display "too offensive" according to St. Louis resident Jim Hoft:
The students of Young Americans for Liberty hosted a rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at noon today on the lawn outside the Ann W. Olin Women's Building at Washington University.
The students set up a gulag complete with prisoners, guards and barb wire on the Wash U campus.
Students constructed a memorial to the victims of socialism as a stark reminder of the horrors of socialism, and of its victims.
"We're hoping to elevate the thinking of students about the connection between socialism, tyranny, and murder. Too often, we tend to think about state control in the abstract. This event is an opportunity to show the student body what socialism really is," said junior Dirk Doebler, student leader of Young Americans for Liberty and lead organizer of the event. "We're just twenty years away from the collapse of the Soviet Union's despotic enslavement of hundreds of millions of people, yet everyone seems to forget that socialism killed over 150,000,000 people in the 20th century. All that gets lost in the convenient narrative our professors would have us believe. With this event, we're striking down false notions. We're speaking truth to power."
YAL leader John Burns reported on the event today. The university shut it down... It was too offensive.
So let's get this straight; students can spill fake blood all over the place when they are protesting war. They can hang presidents in effigy, chant obscene slogans, create "street theater" where they can equate American leaders with Hitler - but a memorial to the victims of a murderous ideology is "too offensive?
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