'Pappy' Shot Down by Campus Ignoramuses

Few fighter squadrons in U.S. history ever became household names across the globe. Marine fighting squadron 214, better known as the "Black Sheep", was certainly one of those rare groups! Led by the always colorful and sometimes controversial Greg "Pappy" Boyington, the intrepid men of the Black Sheep established a highly outstanding record in the South Pacific skies, "often outnumbered, but never outfought", as their Presidential Unit Citation proudly reads.
Artist John D. Shaw now salutes this truly legendary group in the above painting.

The following article is from the Wall Street Journal Online. Just when you think the leftist indoctrination on our college campuses has hit rock bottom with nut cases like Ward Churchill, the history challenged little darlings dig deeper. This has got to be as low as they go, isn't it?

It's well known that college students today aren't as educated in our nation's history as they should be, but it's still hard to grasp the mind-bending political correctness just displayed by the University of Washington's student senate at its campus in Seattle.

The issue before the Senate this month was a proposed memorial to World War II combat pilot Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a 1933 engineering graduate of the university, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service commanding the famed "Black Sheep" squadron in the Pacific. The student senate rejected the memorial because "a Marine" is not "an example of the sort of person UW wants to produce."

Digging themselves in deeper, the student opponents of the memorial indicated: "We don't need to honor any more rich white males." Other opponents compared Boyington's actions during World War II with murder.

"I am absolutely bewildered that the Student Senate voted down the resolution," Brent Ludeman, the president of the UW College Republicans, told me. He noted that despite the deficiencies of the UW History Department, the complete ignorance of Boyington's history and reputation by the student body was hard to fathom. After all, "Black Sheep Squadron," a 1970s television show portraying Colonel Boyington's heroism as a pilot and Japanese prisoner of war, still airs frequently on the History Channel. Apparently, though, it's an unusual UW student who'd be willing to learn any U.S. history even if it's spoonfed to him by TV.

As for the sin of honoring a rich white male, Mr. Ludeman points out that Boyington (who died in 1988) was neither rich nor white. He happened to be a Sioux Indian, who wound up raising his three children as a single parent. "Colonel Boyington is luckily not around to see how ignorant students at his alma mater can be today," says Kirby Wilbur, a morning talk show host at Seattle's KVI Radio. Perhaps the trustees and alumni of the school will now help educate them.
-- John Fund