Posted on 02/06/2005 6:42:05 PM PST by vonda
A CU Regent, liberal-lawyer-Democrat Michael Carrigan, is defending CU Professor/Traitor Ward Churchill, in a statement published on the website of the Cherry Creek News, a newspaper in the heart of liberal Denver neighborhoods. It's time to recall this bozo Carrigan. You can find the article at
They ought to recall everyone voting to give Churchill tenure in the first place.
Hmmmmmm......
Heh heh heh....Welcome to freerepublic vonda.
FMCDH(BITS)
The funny thing is, is that if this guy was White and said that Blacks were inferior and that lynchings in the past had been justified, he would have lost his job within hours and none of these people would be out there screaming "Academic Freedom".
When you are in a public position, and you say things with the sole intent of getting a rise out of the media and public at large, you shouldn't be able to press any charges for one punch to your nose per person.
Why do freepers always insist on lobbying the people who care the least what we think?
Here is an excellent editorial from 2001, addressing the situation about another similar incident, and explaining it in detail what free speech is and isn't.
Free Speech Doesn't Come Without Cost
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=95001420
Consider Robert Jensen, a professor at the University of Texas who calls the U.S. a terrorist nation, asserts that American policy in Afghanistan is a "war of lies" and that a secretive "small elite seeking to extend its power" has tricked the public into supporting apparent anti-terrorism that is actually "the culmination of a decade of U.S. aggression." Mr. Jensen is now extremely unpopular in Texas. There is a letter-writing campaign to get him fired, and he was recently criticized by the president of his own university as a "fountain of undiluted foolishness."
His backers are saying this is an attempt to suppress Mr. Jensen's free speech. In fact, Mr. Jensen continues to speak freely and often. What they really mean is that Mr. Jensen should not have to pay any price for his views. But this misunderstands the nature of the First Amendment. Mr. Jensen's right to his expression--clearly political and protected--is absolute. But there exists no right to exemption from the reaction to what is said.
When the Bill of Rights was enacted, the First Amendment was construed mainly to shield speakers from imprisonment for antigovernment views. That expression could have other costs--denunciation, ostracism, loss of employment--was assumed. Many of the original patriots took enormous risks in the exercise of speech, Patrick Henry being an obvious example. William Blackstone, the English legal theorist closely read by the Framers, argued that the essence of free speech was forbidding prior restraint: Anyone should be able to say anything, but then must live with the aftermath. A citizen should possess "an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public," Blackstone wrote in his "Commentaries"--which James Madison consulted often while working on drafts of the First Amendment wording--but "must take the consequences" for any reaction.
The reaction to free speech, Madison thought, would be part of the mechanism by which society sifted out beliefs. Protected by Madison's amendment, the Ku Klux Klan can spew whatever repugnant drivel its wishes. Society, in turn, shuns KKK members for the repugnant people their free speech exposes them to be. No one expects the KKK to speak without a price; its price is ostracism. Why should repugnant speech on foreign policy or terrorism be any different?
And so, though Robert Jensen has the right to say what he does, his university's president has an equal right to call him a fool. When talk show host Bill Maher says the September terrorists were brave and American pilots are cowardly, his comments fully merit First Amendment protection. But the advertisers who yanked support from his show were also within their rights: That A may speak hardly means B must fund A's speech.
Similarly when the novelist Barbara Kingsolver says "the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder," or the novelist Arundhati Roy says George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are "interchangeable," these statements are safeguarded. But readers may fairly respond by declining to buy Ms. Kingsolver's and Ms. Roy's books, and bookstores may fairly respond by declining to stock them. That these authors have a right to their views does not mean publishers and bookstores must promote them. It is censorship if books are seized and burned; it is not censorship if books are tossed into the trash because their authors mock the liberty that made the books possible. Indeed, expressing revulsion at the sight of a Kingsolver book is itself a form of protected speech.
Speech must be free, but cannot be without cost.
Sorry Mr. Carrigan,
Your final comments do not square with logic. Defending Professor CigarStoreIndian's right to speak, while condeming his comments would not be possible without defeating those who are working hard to support his view that the LITTLE EICHMANS deserved killing. So which shall you choose? The right to live, or the right to speak? What warped SOB's you both are.
Wow! How did you sign up tomorrow?
bttt
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The funny thing is, is that if this guy was White and said that Blacks were inferior and that lynchings in the past had been justified, he would have lost his job within hours and none of these people would be out there screaming "Academic Freedom".
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I wonder what would have happened if he would have said that Hitler was right in exterminating Jews. It would be an interesting case since most liberals and the MSM seem to be anti-Israel.
CU Professor Ward Churchill has a right to say whatever he wants. I personally served in uniform to preserve that right for us all. But his professorship is a privilege and not a right. In my opinion he has proven he does not deserve to hold such a position. His responsibility was to educate not brainwash. Challenging students with controversy is one thing. Preaching the crap he is peddling is quite another. I say, “Not on my tax dollars”
Free speech does not come without social consequence. When the math professor can’t add numbers together and get a logical answer, you get someone who can. When an ethnic-studies professor writes a paper generalizing nearly 3000 people of all ethnic backgrounds into one category, we need to find a replacement too. This guy has a big problem. I don’t want him to proliferate his distorted world view to 75 young minds every 3 month for the next 10 years. Allowing him to do so would be an even greater mistake than hiring him in the first place.
On the other hand its highlighting guys like this Churchill that wins us a bit of ground everyday. Most of these Bozos keep what they actually think to themselves. This guy at least said what he actually thinks instead of hiding his anti-American hatred from us.
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