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.
Maureen Dowdy, eat your ugly heart out.
Thin is good. Conservative is good. Discipline is good. Woman is good. But there are still some out there taking jabs at our fearless leader Ann. Maybe I just wish everyone could join our cult!!
Please! Not to mention that name!
Ann told me to tell you that she appreciates your interest, but that she's perfectly happy here with me. Sorry.
Most of us conservative women love Ann. She says what we wish we could say, but can't get away with!!!
Another good one from Ann.
Vaughn Meader? Would you like that with a little Mao?
She is so quick. I can not imagine her losing a debate. She lacerates her adversaries, but always has that life-loving smile on her face while she is doing it. The lefties HATE it when you laugh at them. I think they hate Ann more than anyone except W himself.
HuH? You can't be too thin...or too conservative...or too blonde.
Oh man! That brings back some memories...you know, it isn't that it was really all that funny, but political humor was so different back then.
"Must you, Lyndon?"
Correct on all three counts. No arguments from me. Usually an Ann basher will have dropped in by now.
That picture is actually cropped, too, but what was on the side was just extras, I cropped it to center in on Annie
"But there are still some out there taking jabs at our fearless leader Ann. Maybe I just wish everyone could join our cult!!"
From Kevin Costner's fairly mediocre baseball movie, "build it and they will come." We have built a strong, effective party and the Dims ARE defecting, either becoming Independents (Closet Dims) or coming all the way over to the Pubbie side. Hannity and the Clown had one on tonight.
Usually an Ann basher will have dropped in by now.
More of those you must laugh at. Then tell them how rediculous they appear.
I really appreciate nearly everything she has written, because she seems to have been able to free herself completely from any brainwashing by the MSM. I find that there are places where my viewpoints on various things retains shades imparted by a pretty much unquestioned exposure to the MSM for so many years.
She is the most politically incorrect writer I know of, and...that is reason enough for me to like her work.
Kind of the same way I felt when I watched the movie "Team America". I think I may have enjoyed it simply BECAUSE it was so politically incorrect!
I vant the eastern portion of his Vestern sandwich!
Good for you. That's a great skill. Walter Williams operates that way too, as if he's talking to someone who can't be serious. Oooh, it's like teasing a small dog to hear that high-pitched growl. And are you one of the people who played Gidget? I know you can't be Sally Field.
Thank you! :-) Yup, took that pic with my crummy old non-digital camera at Hannity's Freedom Concert, July 2003 (Six Flags, Jackson, NJ). RaceBannon scanned the photo for me and has the biggest collection of Ann C. photos that I know of... LOL.
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