Jolie Rouge

ADDENDUM

The preceding was a "first take" reading, more a stream-of-consciousness interpretive reaction to the September 11 counterattack than a finished piece on the topic. Hence, I'll readily admit that I've been far less than thorough, and quite likely wrong about a number of things.

For instance, it may not have been (only) the ghosts of Iraqi children who made their appearance that day. It could as easily have been some or all of their butchered Palestinian cousins.

Or maybe it was some or all of the at least 3.2 million Indochinese who perished as a result of America's sustained and genocidal assault on Southeast Asia (1959-1975), not to mention the millions more who've died because of the sanctions imposed thereafter.

Perhaps there were a few of the Korean civilians massacred by US troops at places like No Gun Ri during the early ‘50s, or the hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians ruthlessly incinerated in the ghastly fire raids of World War II (only at Dresden did America bomb Germany in a similar manner).

And, of course, it could have been those vaporized in the militarily pointless nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are others, as well, a vast and silent queue of faceless victims, stretching from the million-odd Filipinos slaughtered during America's "Indian War" in their islands at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the real Indians, America's own, massacred wholesale at places like Horseshoe Bend and the Bad Axe, Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, the Wa****a, Bear River, and the Marias.

Was it those who expired along the Cherokee Trial of Tears of the Long Walk of the Navajo?

Those murdered by smallpox at Fort Clark in 1836?

Starved to death in the concentration camp at Bosque Redondo during the 1860s?

Maybe those native people claimed for scalp bounty in all 48 of the continental US states? Or the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at the very site where the WTC once stood?

One hears, too, the whispers of those lost on the Middle Passage, and of those whose very flesh was sold in the slave market outside the human kennel from whence Wall Street takes its name.

And of coolie laborers, imported by the gross-dozen to lay the tracks of empire across scorching desert sands, none of them allotted "a Chinaman's chance" of surviving.

The list is too long, too awful to go on.

No matter what its eventual fate, America will have gotten off very, very cheap.

The full measure of its guilt can never be fully balanced or atoned for.


Ward Churchill is professor of American Indian Studies with the Department of Ethnic studies, University of Colorado at Boulder.


http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read.html?id=2739

Political Gateway Special Report

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Churchill probe ordered
CU officials ponder firing prof; regents apologize to nation
By Charlie Brennan,
Rocky Mountain News
February 4, 2005

AURORA - The University of Colorado Board of Regents ordered an investigation Thursday into whether embattled ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill should be fired, and then took the extraordinary step of apologizing to the nation for Churchill's writings about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In a raucous meeting where university leaders were shouted down by Churchill supporters who defied orders to be silent, the regents voted unanimously to authorize a 30- day investigation to determine whether there is cause to fire Churchill, 57.

In what may be an unprecedented action by any major university, the regents also apologized "to all Americans, especially those targeted in the 9/11 attacks and those serving in our armed forces, for the disgraceful comments of professor Churchill."

Two protesters were arrested during the meeting.

Churchill has been the subject of a firestorm of controversy since concerns were raised last week about an essay he wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, in which he compared "technocrats" working in the World Trade Center to notorious Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann and said the United States invited the terrorist attacks through a long history of violent domination of other cultures.

Contacted Thursday night about the regents' decision, Churchill said, "No comment. Until I receive something official from the regents or the university, I'm not going to comment until I know more about what I'm responding to."

The investigation to determine whether Churchill should be fired will be directed by Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano, who has been in that post just two weeks. He will be assisted in the process by Arts and Sciences Dean Todd Gleason and School of Law Dean David Getches.

The probe could put any or all of Churchill's published writings and public remarks under a microscope; this week, he told students in one class he has authored 24 books and 70 other book chapters.

DiStefano's investigation will lead to a report to the regents, who will then make a recommendation to CU President Betsy Hoffman, who holds the power to make a final decision.

"Two primary questions will be examined in this review," DiStefano said: "One, does professor Churchill's conduct, including his speech, provide any grounds for dismissal for cause, as described in the regents' laws?

"And, two, if so, is this conduct or speech protected by the First Amendment against university action?"

The rules established by the regents state that a tenured professor can be fired only for professional incompetence, neglect of duty, insubordination, conviction of a felony or any offense involving moral turpitude, sexual harassment, or "other conduct" that falls below minimum standards of professional integrity.

David Lane, Churchill's attorney, predicted that, ultimately, nothing will come of the CU probe.

Dismissing Thursday's session as "a lot of hand-wringing and tongue-clucking," Lane said "Ward Churchill is entitled, under the First Amendment, to have any opinions about anything - especially matters of public concern - and he is allowed to write those opinions without fear of reprisal from Bill Owens or the regents of the University of Colorado."

Ultimately, Lane predicted, "They will condemn his writings, (but) beyond that, do absolutely nothing, as the law requires. That is the correct result."

Police arrested two of Churchill's supporters - one at the beginning of the meeting and one who could not be subdued until he was grabbed by several officers, one of whom was nearly knocked to the ground in the struggle.

The two-hour meeting deteriorated into chants of "Let him go, let him go," as regents were escorted from the meeting hall on CU's Fitzsimons campus.

Hoffman could not make herself heard, even with the microphone in front of her, as the meeting deteriorated into chaos. Finally, appearing speechless at the disorder that had engulfed the room, the president also made her retreat.

Prior to the meeting's termination, each regent spoke out - several struggling to be heard over remarks directed at them by dissenters - against the substance of Churchill's now infamous essay, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." Some went much further.

Regent Tom Lucero called for a far-reaching evaluation of CU's overall curriculum.

"It naturally follows that I will be seeking justification for all departments and their academic value and merit to the university community," Lucero said. "I want to scrutinize whether or not it is necessary to eliminate courses and departments of questionable academic merit."

Owens, who said Wednesday that he had asked Hoffman to fire Churchill, endorsed the regents' decision to take "the necessary first step" in reviewing the professor's employment status.

The governor added, "However, I deplore the behavior displayed by some students at the regents' meeting. Their abhorrent behavior underscores the culture of violence that can be spawned by inflammatory speeches and essays such as those by Mr. Churchill."

In the wake of the meeting's turbulent climax, Hoffman said it was critical to her to emphasize "the importance of civil debate, the importance of dissent, the importance of the opportunity for people to speak freely, and also for faculty to understand the responsibility that goes with free speech."

Hoffman would not speak to whether she believes Churchill, a tenured professor on the faculty of CU since 1981, should be removed from his post.

"I will not even comment at this point," she said. "It would prejudge any process."

Churchill's essay, written the day that terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon claimed nearly 3,000 lives, took on new life more than three years after he penned it, when protests arose after he was announced as a panelist in a presentation on "The Limits of Dissent."

That event, which was to have taken place Thursday night at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., was canceled after more than a hundred threats of violence convinced Hamilton officials they could not guarantee public safety.

On Monday, Churchill, who has heard himself branded as "Osama bin Churchill" in recent commentary, voluntarily stepped down as chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department, taking a pay cut of about $18,000, but retained his position as a tenured faculty member.

Excerpt from CU resolution

• "The Board of Regents apologizes to all Americans, especially those targeted in the 9/11 attacks and those serving in our armed forces, for the disgraceful comments of professor Churchill."

• Online Extra: To read the full text of the regents' statement, click on Today's links at RockyMountainNews. com. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drm...2241%2C00.html

RELATED STORIES

Churchill's membership in tribe honorary only

Groff alone in voting against resolution

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2nd college yanks Churchill invitation

RELATED LINKS

Audio: Listen to excerpts from Churchill's talks

Poll: Should Ward Churchill resign his professorship?

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

U. of Colo. Professor to Speak in Hawaii



HONOLULU (AP) - A University of Colorado professor whose essay about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ignited a national controversy has accepted an invitation to speak next week at the University of Hawaii. Several university and community organizations are sponsoring Ward Churchill's visit Tuesday to the Manoa campus.

University President David McClain on Friday criticized Churchill's comparison of victims of the World Trade Center attacks to Holocaust organizer Adolph Eichmann, but defended the appearance as an expression of free speech.

In an essay written shortly after the 2001 attacks, Churchill called some victims ``little Eichmanns.'' The ethnic studies professor said later that his essay referred to ``technocrats'' who work for what he calls repressive American policies around the world. He has defended his essay and said he owes no one an apology.

McClain said Friday that he finds Churchill's comments ``personally offensive, wildly inaccurate and remarkably hurtful to those who lost loved ones there on that day.'' But he added, ``Freedom of inquiry and of expression are what universities are all about and freedom of speech is a cornerstone of our democracy.''

The essay drew attention after a campus newspaper reported on it in advance of Churchill's planned visit to a New York school last month. That visit was canceled, as were several others to U.S. colleges, but other schools have invited him to speak in support of his free-speech rights.

On the floor of the Hawaii Senate on Friday, Sen. Fred Hemmings said Churchill's sponsors invited, ``under the guise of academic freedom and freedom of speech, a very evil person.''

The visit jeopardizes the ``reputation and the wisdom of the University of Hawaii and those who bring him here,'' said Hemmings, a Republican. ``It also jeopardizes financial support.''

A professor in one of the departments sponsoring the speech defended the invitation. ``We wanted to signal that we really believe in free expression not just for non-controversial ideas, but for controversial ideas, because that's what free expression is for,'' said Robert Perkinson, a professor of American studies.

Churchill's comments led Colorado's governor to call for his firing and the University of Colorado Board of Regents to launch an investigation into whether a tenured professor could be removed. Churchill resigned from his post as chair of Colorado's Department of Ethnic Studies but has threatened to sue the university if he is fired from the faculty.

02/18/05 23:15

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/sto...78.htm&sc=1110

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

mesue

Wow Jolie you must really dislike this guy to devote so much attention to this story. Thanks for keeping us all posted on it, I had already heard about his statements early on. The thing is while you might not like what he is saying, we live in a country where one can speak their mind and state their opinion without fear, oh yeah the whole world of conservatives are shuddering in unison over what he said and going after him, too bad. Too bad because they the conservatives are always the first ones to say lets send them young people to war to fight for our rights and our freedoms and the first ones to remind everyone how freedom is not free but the first time someone exercises that right in a way that is not in their agenda and says something they disagree with, then American's have too much freedoms ( a statement once made by our current President about freedom). So let me get it straight when someone says something that the conservatives in this world thinks is ok then the freedom to speak ones mind is a good thing but if they disagree with it, the world should crucify him. You can't have it both ways, because if you can deny someone the right to speak his mind then who is free. I don't neccesarily agree with what he said but he had every right to say it whether you or I or anyone else liked it and that is called freedom of speech. I fully support his right to speak his mind or to write an essay on his thoughts. And Jolie even though we very seldom agree I'm betting you agree with me on this one. And while you might find it offensive what he said you can't deny that he had the right to say it if there is such a thing as freedom of speech in this country. Freedom of Speech does still exist, doesn't it?

Jolie Rouge

No. I think he is rather asine - but that is usually NOT grounds for termination.

I just didn't like getting second hand information and out of context quotes from his papers. So I took the trouble to track it down and try to show both sides of the arguement.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

mesue

I agree its certainly not grounds for termination. I have to wonder though and think about the fact that if he had said something just as outrageus, (and I am not saying I find his thoughts outrageous but apparently the current media and conservatives do) but in complete support of the current political thinking in this country would he not be being celebrated or totally ignored if too far out there. I personally find President Bush's statement about not even thinking about Osama Bin Laden much anymore just as bizarre or outrageous. After all OBL is supposed to be responsible for 911 we went into Afghanistan and Iraq due to the attack and now the man who started it all seldom crosses our president's mind.

mesue

One more thought on this and that is that Ward Churchill is a brilliant man and we would do well to listen to him. He never said that all the people killed in the WTC were Little Eichmans. He is saying we were attacked and that these people felt they had a reason for doing what they did, they felt justified in doing what they did. What Ward Churchill is basically saying is that we need to look at why they feel this way, what policies has the USA used overseas to give these people the idea they have a right to do this. 911 was not just some random killing, these people did not wake up one morning and go to a map and pick our country to attack. They did not pick us because they hate our freedoms, they picked us because they hate our policies and what they feel our policies has done to them. I am not saying that they were right but I am saying that we can not win this war against terrorism by blowing up the world, by invading countries that do not like us, there are currently 65 countries that have terrorists in them, are we and can we blow them all up or would it not be simpler and save millions of lives including the lives of our own military to re-examine our policies and work toward doing the right thing? What we do does affects the rest of the world and not always in a good way, it is time that we recognize that, own it and seek to fix it. Below is a schedule of when a program comes on that has Ward Churchill's answers to the attack on his essay. It is without a doubt one of the most informative programs I have ever watched. FSTV is on both dish and direct satellite programming and also some cable companies do carry their programming. Oh thanks Jolie I had heard about this of course and was aware of most of it but it was only after reading your posts that I cruising through the list of what was on the tv saw this program was coming on and watched it.
http://www.freespeech.org/fsitv/fscm....php?name=home
"When They Came for Ward Churchill"
Embattled Professor Ward Churchill speaks on the controversy over his essay, his treatment by the media and the people calling for his firing, and even execution, for 'treason'. In this hour-long program, Prof. Churchill invites FSTV into his home to tell the side of the story told nowhere else on American television: his side.
Schedule(ET): Feb 18th(Fri-8pm), 19th(Sat-3am, 7am & 7pm), 20th(Sun-8am & 3pm), 21st(Mon-4am & 3pm), 22nd(Tues- 8pm & 11pm), and 23rd(Wed-3:30pm).

Jolie Rouge

CENSOR THIS COLUMN
Tue Feb 15, 2005
By Ted Rall

Ward Churchill and the Redefinition of Censorship

NEW YORK--Nothing should appear in a newspaper unless it has first been approved by a government censor, say half the high school students in a recent poll. So free-speechers are losing the never-ending war over freedom of expression. This is because censorship is being redefined.


The latest skirmish over the First Amendment concerns Ward Churchill, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which is a liberal enclave in a conservative state. Hamilton College in upstate New York, which had invited Professor Churchill to speak about American Indian activism, cancelled his appearance after someone Googled his name and found an essay he had written three years earlier--which appeared without a smidgen of attention at the time, much less controversy.

"Some People Push Back" is a furious rant written mere hours after the September 11th attacks, and one suspects the tone of the piece owes much to the revulsion that thoughtful Americans felt for the mindless "United We Stand" jingoism that stifled attempts at serious analysis of the terrorists' motivations in the immediate aftermath. "The men who flew the missions against the WTC and Pentagon were not 'cowards,'" Churchill wrote, presaging remarks that got Bill Maher fired by ABC a few months later. "The word describes all those 'fighting men and women' who sat at computer consoles aboard ships in the Persian Gulf [during the 1991 Gulf War], enjoying air-conditioned comfort while launching cruise missiles into neighborhoods filled with random human beings."

But these are not the comments which caused Hamilton College officials to disinvite Professor Churchill after more than 100 death threats led them to conclude they couldn't guarantee his safety. By this point most people accept that it takes some stones to fly a plane into a building. Mohammad Atta was a mass murderer, but not a wimp.


After World War II, Churchill reminds us, "Pious Americans...led the way in assigning the onus of collective guilt to the German people as a whole, not for things they as individuals had done, but for what they had allowed--nay, empowered--their leaders and their soldiers to do in their name. If the principle was valid then, it remains so now, as applicable to Good Americans as it was the Good Germans."

After calling those killed in the Pentagon legitimate military targets, he challenged the presumed innocence of the World Trade Center victims, calling them "little Eichmanns": "They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire--the 'mighty engine of profit' to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved--and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to 'ignorance'--a derivative, after all, of the word 'ignore'--counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in... it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants [dying in Iraq due to trade sanctions]."



My two cents: Actually, the World Trade Center was no nerve center of American capitalism. Second-tier real estate in an inconvenient corner of Manhattan's financial district, the towers were home to hundreds of two-man representative offices for obscure foreign import-export outfits. That's why so many foreigners died that day. The biggest Wall Street brokerages and investment banks keep their offices further downtown, closer to the action. Only one notable personality, conservative commentator Barbara Olsen, died on 9/11, and she was on one of the planes. No boldface names from the business world died. The 2,800-plus New Yorkers who perished in the towers were mostly clerks. Even if you buy the notion of "collective guilt," the WTC victims, some of whom were illegal immigrants, waiters and maintenance staff, were as innocent as could be. On the other hand, the citizens of a democracy surely bear some responsibility for the actions of their government.


So did Hamilton College censor Ward Churchill?


Not according to the letters of the editor section of the "liberal" New York Times. "Those who present forums to college students," wrote one Dean Brown, "should investigate those who are offered the privilege of speaking...those opinions...do not need to be given a soapbox."


Attorney Thomas Boyden wrote in 1999, "There is no such thing as 'private censorship.' It is only when government uses its coercive powers to inhibit speech that censorship occurs." This is a boilerplate conservative trope. Jay Ambrose, writing in the right-wing Washington Times, used it to justify Disney's 2004 cancellation of a distribution agreement for the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11": "Don't call it censorship, which is what the government does when it tells private parties they cannot say something publicly."


Like Winston Smith in "1984" I'd heard this repeated so often that I began to believe it was true. But the dictionary doesn't relate censorship to government action. The verb to censor is simply "to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable." As a noun, a censor is "a person who is authorized to read publications or correspondence or to watch theatrical performances and suppress in whole or in part anything considered obscene or politically unacceptable." A censor can be an editor, producer or high school principal.


Censorship is grounded in motivation. An editor who, faced with space limitations, decides not to run an article because it's less interesting or important than another isn't a censor. He becomes a censor, however, if he cans a piece because of taste or political concerns.


As Ambrose points out, "No company--whether a film studio, newspaper corporation or whatever--can or should publish or distribute everything that comes its way." He's got a point. Who wants to read a paper containing 290 million letters to the editor? Nevertheless, we should ask ourselves three simple questions to determine whether a voice is being censored or edited:


1. What are the reasons for the suppression?

Were Professor Churchill an inept lecturer or ignorant about American Indian activism, the subject he was originally invited to discuss, Hamilton might have a legitimate reason to disinvite him. But his critics don't say that. He is being savaged for sins of tastelessness (insulting the dead) and political incorrectness (arguing that ordinary Americans, tacitly complicit in their government's genocidal foreign policies, had it coming on 9/11). These are dictionary definitions of censorship.


2. What is being suppressed?

Popular opinions don't require protection. The First Amendment was written to protect free expression that causes discomfort, even rage, by the majority. Both the censor and the civil libertarian will probably disagree with Churchill's assessment of American collective guilt, but the true defender of free speech recognizes his own revulsion as further reason to err on the side of open discussion over silence.


3. Who is being suppressed?

Perhaps the most reliable barometer of censorship is the relative sociopolitical status of people and institutions urging the suppression versus the voice being suppressed. In one corner of the Churchill controversy, we have a 57-year-old ethnic studies instructor with unusually strident political views. In the other there's Colorado's governor and state legislature, hundreds of right-wing talk radio hosts around the country, and Bill O'Reilly, the hugely popular Fox News talking head--all of which have demanded that the University of Colorado fire him. These calls have prompted vandals to trash his car and threaten his life. Only the powerful may censor; only the weak can be censored.


The most ironic aspect of censorship is that it attracts wider attention to comments that were previously ignored. After the speech police went after Ward Churchill, the readership of his 9/11 essay shot up by millions. He became nationally known. Had the right-wingers managed to censor themselves, only a few hundred souls would ever have seen it in an obscure journal called "Pockets of Resistance."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...nsorthiscolumn



If Sadamn had allowed the UN inspectors to do their jobs, the sactions could have been addressed.

Further if Sadamn had used the money from the Oil for Food progamn as it was intended instead of stealing 23 Billion and using it for palaces and treasures for his family and cronies, the people of Iraq would have had food & medicine.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

NOT CRAZY HORSE, JUST CRAZY
Wed Feb 16, 2005
By Ann Coulter

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has written that "unquestionably, America has earned" the attack of 9/11. He calls the attack itself a result of "gallant sacrifices of the combat teams." That the "combat teams" killed only 3,000 Americans, he says, shows they were not "unreasonable or vindictive." He says that in order to even the score with America, Muslim terrorists "would, at a minimum, have to blow up about 300,000 more buildings and kill something on the order of 7.5 million people."


To grasp the current state of higher education in America, consider that if Churchill is at any risk at all of being fired, it is only because he smokes.

Churchill poses as a radical living on the edge, supremely confident that he is protected by tenure from being fired. College professors are the only people in America who assume they can't be fired for what they say.

Tenure was supposed to create an atmosphere of open debate and inquiry, but instead has created havens for talentless cowards who want to be insulated from life. Rather than fostering a climate of open inquiry, college campuses have become fascist colonies of anti-American hate speech, hypersensitivity, speech codes, banned words and prohibited scientific inquiry.

Even liberals don't try to defend Churchill on grounds that he is Galileo pursuing an abstract search for the truth. They simply invoke "free speech," like a deus ex machina to end all discussion. Like the words "diverse" and "tolerance," "free speech" means nothing but: "Shut up, we win." It's free speech (for liberals), diversity (of liberals) and tolerance (toward liberals).

Ironically, it is precisely because Churchill is paid by the taxpayers that "free speech" is implicated at all. The Constitution has nothing to say about the private sector firing employees for their speech. That's why you don't see Bill Maher on ABC anymore. Other well-known people who have been punished by their employers for their "free speech" include Al Campanis, Jimmy Breslin, Rush Limbaugh, Jimmy the Greek and Andy Rooney.

In fact, the Constitution says nothing about state governments firing employees for their speech: The First Amendment clearly says, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." Firing Ward Churchill is a pseudo-problem caused by modern constitutional law, which willy-nilly applies the Bill of Rights to the states -- including the one amendment that clearly refers only to "Congress." (Liberals love to go around blustering "'no law' means 'no law'!" But apparently "Congress" doesn't mean "Congress.")

Even accepting the modern notion that the First Amendment applies to state governments, the Supreme Court has distinguished between the government as sovereign and the government as employer. The government is extremely limited in its ability to regulate the speech of private citizens, but not so limited in regulating the speech of its own employees.

So the First Amendment and "free speech" are really red herrings when it comes to whether Ward Churchill can be fired. Even state universities will not run afoul of the Constitution for firing a professor who is incapable of doing his job because he is a lunatic, an incompetent or an idiot -- and those determinations would obviously turn on the professor's "speech."

If a math professor's "speech" consisted of insisting that 2 plus 2 equals 5, or an astrophysicist's "speech" was to claim that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, or a history professor's "speech" consisted of rants about the racial inferiority of the slaves, each one of them could be fired by a state university without running afoul of the constitution.

Just because we don't have bright lines for determining what speech can constitute a firing offense, doesn't mean there are no lines at all. If Churchill hasn't crossed them, we are admitting that almost nothing will debase and disgrace the office of professor (except, you know, suggesting that there might be innate differences in the mathematical abilities of men and women).


In addition to calling Americans murdered on 9/11 "little Eichmanns," Churchill has said:

The U.S. Army gave blankets infected with smallpox to the Indians specifically intending to spread the disease.

Not only are the diseased-blanket stories cited by Churchill denied by his alleged sources, but the very idea is contradicted by the facts of scientific discovery. The settlers didn't understand the mechanism of how disease was transmitted. Until Louis Pasteur's experiments in the second half of the 19th century, the idea that disease could be caused by living organisms was as scientifically accepted as crystal reading is today. Even after Pasteur, many scientists continued to believe disease was spontaneously generated from within. Churchill is imbuing the settlers with knowledge that in most cases wouldn't be accepted for another hundred years.


Indian reservations are the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps.

I forgot Auschwitz had a casino.


If Ward Churchill can be a college professor, what's David Duke waiting for?



The whole idea behind free speech is that in a marketplace of ideas, the truth will prevail. But liberals believe there is no such thing as truth and no idea can ever be false (unless it makes feminists cry, such as the idea that there are innate differences between men and women). Liberals are so enamored with the process of free speech that they have forgotten about the goal.

Faced with a professor who is a screaming lunatic, they retreat to, "Yes, but academic freedom, tenure, free speech, blah, blah," and their little liberal minds go into autopilot with all the slogans.

Why is it, again, that we are so committed to never, ever firing professors for their speech? Because we can't trust state officials to draw any lines at all here? Because ... because ... because they might start with crackpots like Ward Churchill -- but soon liberals would be endangered? Liberals don't think there is any conceivable line between them and Churchill? Ipse dixit.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...horsejustcrazy

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

mesue

And would you have expected anything else from Ann Coulter? I am forever amazed by those who want to tear someone down because of what they said but yet sit there and promote war all for the sake of democracy and part of that democracy is supposed to be freedom of speech now she is saying freedom of speech within reason the way I read it. I agree with what he said maybe he could have said it without the shock value of naming all of our little indiscretions of the past but just the same it is not giving into the terrorists to recognize why they hate us, it is not giving into the terrorists to find a better way to deal with the rest of the world. It is to our own advantage to do so. The American people are not stupid or blind one day they will recognize this. For they the American people are the first to send aid they are the first to offer help and I am not talking about our government I am talking about the generosity of the American people.

Jolie Rouge

Notice that I posted two different columns from opposite ends of the issue.

**

I resent the fact that Churchill would justify terrorist actions by using examples two and three HUNDRED old. Three thousand people - mainly low level clerks & secretaries not the power brokers Churchill derides - died because "... the Raritans whose severed heads were kicked for sport along the streets of what was then called New Amsterdam, at the very site where the WTC once stood ?" That is why we call is TERRORISM.

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?