To the Editor:
I am beginning to think that the people so avidly attacking the Objectivist Club’s guest speaker and ad in The Poly have neither actually read "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism" nor listened to "America at War: the Moral Imperative of Self-Defense."
I received a letter from the MSA before the talk had been given or the article was published which—in veiled terms—suggested that the administration suppress the ideas to be presented by the Objectivist Club. And now, the ISA and PakSA seem to be implying the same thing, though they claim stronger justification; if only their claims were true.
The ISA/PakSA letter uses the general negative connotations attached to "extreme" and "violent" to give a malevolent impression of both the ad and the speech, while citing neither. I am personally all for "extreme"—i.e., consistent—and "violent" attacks on the murderers of thousands of American civilians. Are they?
Neither the talk nor the ad suggested that every person in the Middle East was a terrorist. I don’t think every person in the Middle East is a terrorist. Do they?
We’re not collectively condemning every Middle Eastern person for the actions of terrorists and terrorist-supporting governments. It seems that they, however, are practicing that very collectivism by imagining that supporting attacks against terrorists and the nations that support them is supporting the destruction of the Middle East.
As to the implication that the president, chaplain, and student government have voiced concerns regarding the ideas presented by the Objectivist Club—they certainly haven’t voiced them to the club, or in any public forum that I am aware of. That they have voiced concerns against racism and other forms of collectivism is both good and absolutely necessary. I join them.
Aneel Lakhani,
President, RPI Objectivist Club
