To the Editor:

The cascade of whining and ignorance written by nearly 300 Georgetown graduates and found on the university’s Facebook page in regard to my recent article on the citizen’s responsibility to protect liberty is very interesting. It testifies as to just how close Georgetown is to becoming a member in good standing of the Ivy League: ignorant of U.S. history, anti-American and not at all bothered but rather enthusiastic about the advance of tyranny in America under the auspices of the national government’s executive branch.
My article, of course, never “called” for the assassination of Obama or Cameron. It was, rather, a warning to them, their parties and to their successors that no republican people is obliged to sit quietly like lapdogs and watch their nation become a tyranny, although those Georgetown graduates who commented on Facebook appear to be largely that poodle class. The U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, of course, expresses the idea of the citizen’s duty to resist tyranny much more clearly and concisely than I ever could.
Whether The Hoya or its readers like it or not, both the Obama and Bush presidencies were marked by studied advances toward tyranny. Foreign wars without a congressional declaration of war; signing statements and executive orders to circumvent laws or make them dead letters; and amending laws with the stroke of the executive pen are all unconstitutional measures which — if not opposed by means appropriate to the times — will make the national government a tyranny. Perhaps such an advance to tyranny is okay with Georgetown and its graduates, but it is not okay with me, and I think not okay with plenty of other Americans.
A good many of the comments on the Facebook page also cry out in apparent pain: “What are the Jesuits doing letting Scheuer teach at the university?” Simply put, I am the best at what I do; indeed, no one’s predictions of where the war on Islam is going have been more accurate than mine since 2002.
But I think the just-noted question would have been a good one had it been truncated to “What are the Jesuits doing?” Clearly, what they are not doing is teaching with any talent, depth or frankness — given the substance of the Facebook comments — about the history of liberty in the United States and Anglo-American world; the founders’ views on the issue or the work of our English forefathers, which provided the basis for the founders’ thought. Even with this clear failure, one might have thought that Georgetown’s Jesuits would at least have been teaching St. Paul’s guidance that rulers are to be obeyed only so long as they rule justly. The idea of “unlimited obedience to rulers” cannot be found in St. Paul’s writings, although it is rife among my Facebook critics.
Perhaps it is time for Georgetown’s Jesuits to return both St. Paul and crucifixes to the classroom, if only to repair some of the damage my Facebook critics caused to the university’s claim of producing superior graduates who are ready — God and St. Paul help us — to be America’s future leaders.

M.F. Scheuer
Adjunct Professor
Center for Security Studies