Posted on 02/13/2005 10:35:01 AM PST by Chi-townChief
"Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech."
Last August, I wrote a column suggesting the First Amendment be voided. I was being facetious.
My real point was that few journalists have done anything to deserve freedom of speech. (Excepting us at The Star, naturally.) It's unearned privilege.
Journalists are not defenders of the Constitution; they are defenders of Bill Clinton and John Kerry. Also, they are defenders of their meal ticket. That's about it.
Reading e-mail responses, however, I realized I had confused some. They thought I was serious about killing the First Amendment.
My fault. I should have rewritten the column a few more times. Let me clear this up now: I do want to keep the amendment. OK? Sorry for the confusion.
Now comes Ward Churchill, a history professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, who believes those who died in the World Trade Center on 9-11 were "little Eichmanns."
The reference is to the banal Austrian bureaucrat, surprisingly ordinary-looking, who was in charge of the infrastructure of Hitler's Final Solution.
Adolf Eichmann never piloted a train through the night in Poland. He never sealed the hermetic door of a "disinfection chamber." No, Eichmann was the desk-murderer.
Now we know from Ward Churchill that those in the Twin Towers were banal American bureaucrats in charge of a new Final Solution that murders Iraqi infants for profit. What do you know?
Churchill would like you to think he's fighting for free speech. He's not. He's fighting for his right to be a jackass and still keep his job. This case has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It's about employment at will.
You see, in America, having a job is like having a girlfriend. Like it or not, each party has the right to end the relationship at any time, for any reason.
The First Amendment simply keeps you out of jail. It does not protect your employment. It does not give you immunity to the consequences of your speech that may arise in the American marketplace of jobs and ideas.
Ward Churchill does not grasp this point. Nor do performers such as Natalie Maines.
Two years ago, Maines, who is a Texan, told an audience in London, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Angry fans stopped buying her CDs, and she complained her First Amendment rights had been violated.
Al Gore added that the Dixie Chicks "were made to feel un-American and risked economic retaliation because of what was said. Our democracy has taken a hit."
Oh no! Made to feel un-American! That's funny, I never knew there was a constitutional right to feel American.
Furthermore, our democracy did not "take a hit" here. It got a boost. You see, another definition of Gore's "economic retaliation" is: "people voting with their dollar."
In short, the First Amendment is not about CD sales. Can we please dispense with this silliness now?
All that said, I still must conclude it would be a mistake for the school to fire Ward Churchill.
If this loon gets canned for his genuine hateful America-hating comments, the Angry Left soon will come after phony hateful right-wing comments with a vengeance.
For instance, they'll demand that Lawrence Summers be fired as president of Harvard for suggesting that female brains do not work exactly the same as male brains in math and science.
For most of us, this is common sense. We know there are sex differences in many parts of the human body. How can they all suddenly vanish when they get to the skull? Is there a sign that says "No sex differences past this line"?
"Damn, we're stuck," one adventurous sex difference might say to another. "It's back to the torso for us."
Another educator in the sights of the Angry Left is Hans-Herman Hoppe of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Hoppe, an economics professor, recently stated in class, in passing, that gays, like young adults and older people, don't save money for the future as much as other demographic groups.
There are two reasons for this, he said. One is that gays don't have a lot of children, the other that they tend to engage in riskier lifestyles.
Hoppe was not passing judgment on gays. He was simply trying to observe and explain. For this, the usual suspects want him punished.
I'm not saying Hoppe is right or wrong. I'm saying his theory is worthy of discussion in the classroom. To penalize him for this values-neutral supposition would be an offense against human knowledge. As Hoppe says, the complaining student needs to grow up.
Now, returning to Ward Churchill: Another reason to keep the professor is that otherwise he'll pass himself off as a martyr and get rich. That's enough pretending, if you ask me. He's already passing himself off as a Native American on the basis that one of his 32 great-great-great-great-grandfathers might have taken a Cherokee as his second wife.
Other bizarre aspects of this saga are still unfolding, including the possible fabrication of a story that the Army used smallpox to exterminate Mandan Indians in 1837 in North Dakota. However, I don't have room to get into them now. (You might find this report highly interesting: hal.lamar.edu/~browntf/churchill1.htm.)
Let me just say that based on what we know right now, we ought not fire Churchill. We must be content simply to despise him.
It hurts, I know. But we'll get over it.
Michael Bowers is a copy editor and page designer for The Star. His column appears every other Sunday. Readers can send e-mail to mbowers@starnewspapers.com.
Sums it up pretty nicely.
CHICAGOLAND PING
Exactly, people don't seem to get this.
Free speech doesn't protect jobs, but tenure does.
He's a tenured prof, and what he said is not grounds for firing him.
OTOH, his lying about his qualifications during his application certainly is.
The left does not want to even hear facts, much less think about them. Very good analysis indeed.
Add the academic fraud and plagiarism in his writings to that and you've got a 'three-fer' for firing him.
"Add the academic fraud and plagiarism in his writings to that and you've got a 'three-fer' for firing him."
It is my understanding that his writings and "research" are the heart of the investigation right now.
Well, they certainly should be. There are some long-standing, serious allegations of fabrication and plagiarism on his part that, as far as I know, haven't been addressed at all.
Thing is, conservatives invoke the liberal theory of the First Amendment when it is an Ivy League university instead of a high school principal who is doing the censoring. And you can't have it both ways.
I go the author one better. I think the whole "Bill of Rights" was a mistake.
From what I have seen over the weekend, it appears his research and published materials are the subject right now since they are about the only things that could give the unversity cause to dismiss him. Also, something about Churchill going to Libya and meeting the wacky Colonel when Americans were forbade from travelling to Lybia in the early '80s.
I think they are going to sink Churchill and on much stronger grounds than his stupid anti-American bile.
I hope he keeps on talking not matter his venue. Every time he opens his mouth he sounds a little more like Howard Dean/Whoopie Goldberg, etc.
You sound like a d***** Federalist. Neither Hamilton nor Madison wanted a "Bill of Rights". It would have been much better if the amdendments had been label the "Bill of Restrictions" and that the 9th and 10th had been more clearly spelled out as the Virginia legislature wanted.
bump for later
I might also add, if the writer did not, that the First Amendment does not give the speaker freedom from the consequences that stem from his/her words.
Well written piece. It's time that people realized free speech doesn't mean guaranteed employment by people offended by your speech.
Say what you want, but don't expect people to appreciate it.
I am a Federalist. And the "Bill of Rights" has been a disaster.
The Federalists were the conservatives of the early Federal period. The Jeffersonians were the radicals.
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