Social justice idiocy and hypocrisy may have hit its pinnacle with Hampshire College, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

From CNN:

  On Monday, Lash announced in a Facebook statement that the college had decided on November 18 that no flags, US or otherwise, would fly over campus for the time being. But students can still fly their own flags.

“Our goal is to give voice to the range of viewpoints on campus across cultures, and hopefully find common ground,” Courtmanche said in a statement. “We’ve heard from members of our community that, for them and for many in our country, the flag is a powerful symbol of fear they’ve felt all their lives because they grew up as people of color, never feeling safe. For others, it’s a symbol of their highest aspirations for the country.”

John Velis, an Army veteran and state representative, called on the college president to reinstate the US flag immediately.

“The president’s position fundamentally does not make sense to me,” Velis told CNN. “It is baseless, cowardly, a disgrace,” he added.

Velis would be correct. For a number of reasons.

I could go into those reasons, but I was thrilled to see that America’s favorite blue collar sage, Mike Rowe, had already tackled the topic on his Facebook page.

Rowe has a way of breaking seemingly complicated issues down to the core of simplicity and commonsense.

On Wednesday night, Rowe wrote:

Last night on the tee-vee, as I flicked back and forth between my most trusted sources of cable news, I saw a number a college students setting fire to the American flag. Some of the students said they were “angry.” Others said they were “disgusted.” But many others were anxious to explain why they had become “fearful” of the American Flag. Interesting.

At Hampshire College, The President, Jonathan Lash, has actually removed the flag from his campus, in response to students who expressed “fear and discomfort” when confronted by the sight of Old Glory. He offered this explanation: “Removing the flag from our campus will better enable us to focus our efforts on addressing racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and behaviors.”

As I dropped one of those giant round ice cubes into a tumbler of Whistle Pig, I couldn’t help but wonder if President Lash was unaware that billions of people around the world are routinely subjected to horrific levels of racism, misogyny, and bigotry that far exceed any injustice in modern-day America. Furthermore, I was curious to know if President Lash really believed that removing our flag is a better way to assuage the fears of his frightened students, than simply educating them about the undeniable fact that no country on the planet affords its citizens more liberty than this one? Finally, I found myself wondering as to why the President of Hampshire College would allow his students to pay for their tuition with federal dollars – federal dollars provided by the same government whose flag was no longer suitable to fly at his school.

Here’s the problem. Tuition at Hampshire College is about $60,000 a year. That’s not a problem because it’s expensive – it’s a problem because 85% of Hampshire students qualify for some form of federal financial aid. http://bit.ly/2gsZxnk. That means that We the People are enabling schools like Hampshire to sell a liberal arts degree for approximately $250,000. With $1.3 trillion dollars of student debt currently on the books, I found myself thinking how nice it would be to hear a more persuasive argument from those who will happily take money from a country whose flag they despise.

I turned the channel, and watched another group of students dance around another pile of burning flags at another expensive university. I couldn’t tell where they were, but occurred to me that wherever they were – it probably wasn’t a trade school. To my knowledge, no one has ever burned a flag at a trade school.

I wonder why that is?

I’ll take a stab at it.

Because at trade schools, students are learning to get their hands dirty with real work. There is little time for participation in crying circles or huddling in safe spaces when you’re trying to learn HVAC repair, or the intricacies of pipefitting.

It’s a lot, and when it’s done right, there is a pride of accomplishment that doesn’t allow for the whining and neediness of the modern left.

People who are looking to trade industries are there to learn to work, specifically.

Liberal Arts colleges exist to take federal dollars, while teaching students who, for a great many, have no real idea what they want to be when they grow up, how to be professional protesters.

Rowe hit the nail on the head when he mentioned those schools taking federal dollars from a nation they feel is too oppressive and offensive to honor by flying its flag.

I’ve always said that hypocrisy is a leftist virtue. This proves my point.

I recently wrote about Donald Trump suggesting prison or loss of citizenship for those who burn the flag as being unconstitutional. I still believe that.

However, would it be awful to help out those who feel no pride or loyalty for this nation by unencumbering them from the bonds of federal aid?

No student aid to colleges that find the flag of our nation offensive.

Flag burners, or those who attack our police? Any federal aid they are receiving, other than military benefits they may be getting, end that.

How quickly do you think colleges like Hampshire College would become meccas of patriotism?

Probably pretty quickly.

I’ve long held the belief that Mike Rowe is a national treasure. His birthday should be a national holiday, where everyone has cake, special “Dirty Jobs” greeting cards are exchanged, and memorials are made to Rowe’s MikeRoweWORKS Foundation.

It would be one of the most patriotic days of the year.