It's About Time!!

Submitted by Arlinda DeAngelis (United States), Jul 19, 2005 at 22:36

I remember the battle like it was yesterday, the smears, the ad hominem attacks on Dr. Pipes' character. It was the most disgusting display of the lowest kind of human behavior against a scholar, a thinker and an educator that I have ever witnessed in my life.

It was then and there I decided along that if it was the last fight I was ever in, it was going to be a lalapalooza. It culminated, of course, during the nomination process of Dr. Pipes' appointment to the United States Institute for Peace.

I am to the right of Dr. Pipes. But that is neither here nor there. His impeccable credentials, his scholarship and his brilliant analytical mind in a time when this country needs the best thinkers in the world is what makes his presence so crucial to the political and academic landscape. He's also one helluva good fighter. He is tenacious and extremely tough minded.

Everything he says and does is always about scholarship. The attacks on him were remarkable for their virulence and stupidity. I mean some of these big political mucky mucks looked like and sounded like uneducated lunatics in comparsion to the studious Dr. Pipes.

Ah, but we shouldn't ever underestimate the will of those quiet studious types. They win everytime. Why? Because they can make us so uncomfortable that we are forced to think. And reflection and analysis won out over crude, insidious and mindless behavior.

When Dr. Pipes won his battle, we all won. Logic trumped hate. That light at the end of the long dark tunnel .... is Dr. Pipes. May it shine forever.

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