What’s remarkable here is the total lack of self-awareness with which these people will hold a graduation ceremony for soldiers (officers) in a public park, then rationalize the bombing of schools, hospitals, bridges, power plants, and crowds of starving civilians by claiming that the presumptive presence of n “terrorists” or “militants” at those locations makes it all OK. Wouldn’t the same logic rationalize blowing up everyone in the park pictured here, including all of the complacent but supportive civilians? What complaint could they offer if someone did here what was done at Old Dominion University?

We’re told that the total destruction of the universities of Gaza is legitimate, even noble, because these universities contained members of Hamas. But American universities have ROTC programs, these ROTC programs are staffed by the military, and the programs involve the participation in military affairs of “civilian” faculty along with whole academic departments as well. Why aren’t they candidates for destruction? What would be wrong with firebombing all of Alexander Street, where Princeton ROTC is located, or firebombing Dickinson Hall, where the History Department is housed (see the third link above)?

We were told that what made October 7 so “heinous” was that it “started” a war and broke a cease fire. (None of that is true, by the way.) Why then is Princeton University celebrating the graduation of ROTC officers whose purpose is to serve a military that started a war and has broken the cease fire negotiated to that war? (For a wider-angle view, see this as well.)

When people complain about activist “aggressiveness” and the supposed zealotry of “the woke,” including those involved in the pro-Palestine and anti-war movements, they’re evading several painfully obvious things. One is the sheer evil of our adversaries. We are not engaged in military aggression and mass murder; they are. We’re trying to stop them. So why does the burden of civility fall more heavily on us than on them?

Second: our adversaries are resolutely deaf to the claims of civil dialogue. Why then are we obliged to continue with it? Is quixoticism a categorical imperative?

Third: we’re told that we exhibit an offensive form of dogmatism and zealotry. But even if we accepted this accusation, theirs at least equals or exceeds ours. Our “zealotry and single-mindedness” is simply a reaction to theirs. The zealotry and single-mindednesss began with them, not us. No one in the anti-war movement has been constantly at war for the last eighty years.

Fourth: We’re told that we lack openness to “viewpoint diversity.” What viewpoint diversity is permitted within ROTC? The entire ROTC “curriculum” consists of indoctrination for imperial military service. And how would the adoption of viewpoint diversity justify what they’re doing, anyway?

Fifth: for all of the blather about “human shields,” what standing does the U.S. government have to talk about them? All of us are human shields for their activities all the time, and have been since the Cold War. How can people committed to nuclear deterrence via mutually assured destruction complain about “human shields”? How can people committed to housing ROTC programs in universities (and JROTC in high schools), or celebrating ROTC graduations in the vicinity of civilians, complain about them? How can people who hold military summer camps for eight-year-olds in public high schools complain about them?

The standard complaints made against the “woke” anti-war movement are plain bullshit–handwaving and motivated reasoning at their worst. No one has given us a good reason to take them seriously. Wokeness is justified, activist aggressiveness is justified, disruption is justified, civil disobedience is justified, single-mindedness is justified, and zealotry is justified. These are just expressions of instrumental rationality in the service of justice. If you don’t like them, either tell us why we should repudiate the end, or find alternate and incompatible means to that end. Otherwise, we’re justified in ignoring you, and justified in carrying on.