Posted on 02/16/2005 7:37:24 PM PST by Dustin Hawkins
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."
Ann Coulter
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 n-----s, 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.
You know the rules.
Yeah, the rules. Me and my friend Principled are getting tired of waiting. (thanks for the post, BTW)
Thank you. Now I can go about my other business.
Hey havent seen that pic before... stalker! :)
My prediction is that this article will reach 8 postings it's so good - and this is only the second!
Ann makes me proud to be a female...a conservative female.
Everybody needs a hobby :o
Ann's work should be reposted at least once every 2 hours, just for the pictures alone :-)
Just doing my job :)
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Glad there are women out there who like Ann. I notice quite a few on the distaff side of the fence who take shots at her. Always complaining about her being too thin.
That picture was taken by Nutmeg at the last Hannity show at 6-flags, I been posting it for months, only larger.
Hot. I love you Ann. Marry me?
Miss Coulter may not be able to do math, but she can write circles around most of the fools that are given space to publish in the MSM. Oh, to be 30 again (even 40) and in her presence on a daily basis!
C'mon...conservative women are disciplined...and thin.
I find it utterly amazing that someone like Ann Coulter would be villified by the feminists. This is a woman who can compete on equal terms with any guy intellectually, and doesn't need some Feminist Manifesto or equal opportunity prop to steer her. She is everything they wish they could be, and...pretty good looking to boot. Their disdain for Ann Coulter shows them to be the empty headed ideologists most of them are. (Not that we didn't see that in their unequivocal support for Bill Clinton!)
The feminists should be elevating people like Margaret Thatcher, Condi Rice, Phyllis Schlafly (Ms. Schlafly, whose accomplishments dwarf anyone's in the feminist movement) but instead they have...Gloria Steinhem???? Madeline Albright?
As a conservative female, you have some great company, and that is a lot more than can be said for a liberal like Hilliary Clinton.
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