Talk about knee-jerk responses! Ha!

It’s not like your big long words add anything to the discussion anyway. They’re just nothing but unsubstantiated whines about OMG those liberals are so illiberal. Any academic worth his salt can see through all that.

And, in part, it’s an illiberal, self-satisfied ideologue/academic being mimiced, a common and commonly conforming species, particularly known for their multiplicity of ad hoc commandments, such as:

“We can dish it out aplenty and as aggressively as we like, but should never have to take it, for we are the righteous.”

(D) Israeli academics are largely progressive and at the vanguard of the peace movement, and therefore they must be supported not boycotted.

This is simply a myth propagated and maintained by Israeli academics who count themselves in the “left.” The vast majority of Israeli academics serves in the army’s reserve forces, and therefore directly knows of and participates in the daily crimes. Moreover, with the exception of a tiny yet crucial minority, Israeli academics are largely supportive of their state’s oppression or are acquiescently silent about it.

…and I suspect he’s quite correct. Israeli academics that I personally know (quite a few, actually, mostly mathematicians) who still live there are as much right-wing Arabophobic bigots as any ultra-orthodox wingnut from Jerusalem. Sad but true.

Oh wait, I see you use a lot of nice big words. Am I talking to a liberal elitist here? Or am I talking to a libertarian elitist here?

Or let me rephrase your words in words which Joe Schmoe can understand:

Hey look! The Newsweek news is nothing compared to this! OMG! The APSA speaks out against the boycott! Look, it signals the start of an epic war along the scale of Ben Hur, LotR, RoTK, and Star Wars I-IV all combined! Flushing someone’s holy book down the toilet bowl, how can it compare to APSA’s epic announcement? The Quran? Pah! Rights of Muslims? Hrmph! Religious freedom? Snort!

Hmm, maybe you’re right. But I say, the biggest news item in the entire universe is this: I just updated my blog, so go worship it now, you moron!

Your own bull is pronounced, in addition to deriving from kneejerk, reactionary pieties and an overbearing quantity of self-satisfaction.

Too, it’s particularly telling herein, precisely in terms of the highly fevered ideological religiosity so often in evidence, that this AUT post receives but seven replies (even fewer once the partisan sniping is subtracted) while a pious simplisticus, red-meat issue like the one invoked by the News-Tweak article receives over 150 replies.

Venom and malice, along with reductionist partisanship, come readily from this congregation of conformists and opportunists, while genuinely thoughtful and substantive commentary about a truly worthy issue, such as this AUT topic, comes sparingly at best.

Ergo: freedom to bull, indeed, and tellingly so.

Then again, it’s not as if serious dialog, debate or exchanges in general are being sought in the first place. When a highly fevered ideological religionist, in a pious congregation such as this, already possesses the truth, such niceties can either be finessed or can be dispensed out of hand, e.g., reduced to the ubiquitous, sweepingly dismissive – snarl and sneer.

Boo.