Wacky Mass. Students Heard In Montana

By Izzy Lyman
February 2002

Belgrade, Montana – The wackiness of Massachusetts college students has not gone unnoticed out here where buffalo roam and the deer and antelope play.

While hanging around my hotel’s festive lobby, Dave, the maintenance supervisor, started telling Cheri, the front desk clerk, about a know-it-all in a place about which I know-all.

“They had this kid on Fox News from a liberal college in Massachusetts,” began Dave.

I immediately thought: Well, which one of a hundred colleges could he mean?

“He was complaining about the war in Afghanistan. This kid blamed the war on American racism,” he editorialized to an attentive Cheri. “Their ideas for stopping terrorists didn’t make any sense.”

Dave, they major in not making sense there.

“I nearly gagged,” Dave concluded.

Why wasn’t a gag placed over the mouth of this kid?

Good Ol’ Hampshire College

“You’re talking about Hampshire College in Amherst, right?” I guessed.

“Yeah, that was the name of the school,” he said.

“I live there,” said I.

Admitting this to Dave, who’s retired military, is only a little better than saying, “I live in a cave in Tora Bora.” What would he think if he knew that in addition to “Hampshire Students for a Peaceful Response” broadcasting the results of their “all-community” vote about an “unjust war” to the world, the school also offers a class in Erotic Device Design?

Dave, however, explained why this story is intriguing to a patriotic Montanan. “A peace movement out here would be a shock. We’re more the militia type.”

Certainly, there’s no indication that work-with-their-hands Westerners would dash to appear on a national television show to throw an ideological tantrum against the Department of Defense. Yet, it is to their great credit – considering how far removed they are from Ground Zero – that they view 9-11 as an attack upon “our” citizens, requiring decisive action.

Cheri, for instance, has been gently trying to persuade Belgrade’s budding peacenik – her teenage daughter, Savannah – to reconsider her anti-war views. She made Savannah watch portions of the Osama bin Laden video and accompanied it with a short speech. “The man is guilty. He’s got to pay for what he’s done. America is doing everything they can to avoid bombing civilians.”

According to Savannah: “I don’t think we should bomb innocent people because they attacked us. But my mom says we should fight back with all we have.” Atta girl, Cheri. Thanks to your persistence, your daughter won’t be applying for admission to Hampshire College, or any other college in Massachusetts, anytime soon.

Like Dave and Cheri, Clint Cain, spokesman for the Bozeman militia and a Korean War vet, is also giving war a chance. “Whatever George W. Bush has done is fine. I do agree with the bombing. I do agree with getting all al-Qaida,” says ol’ Clint. “The most dangerous time in the United States is right now.”

But he adds a caveat: “Before going in after any more terrorists in any other country, President Bush should craft a foreign policy with Congress.”

In light of the level-headedness of the folks I’ve met here in Big Sky country, I am beginning to question just how wild the West really is. It seems to me that it’s the Northeast’s ivory tower leftists who should be dubbed “wild,” not to mention a threat to national security.

From the Continental Divide, Feliz Navidad to readers of Massachusetts News!