Free Republic

Steven Daniel Barber, 23, says a culture of fear has displaced rational thought. The Iraq War veteran's comments came Tuesday, shortly after learning his expulsion from the University of Virginia at Wise had been upheld. He has been prohibited from attending classes since Feb. 29 -- the day after sharing a story in which a character contemplates murdering his professor, then turns to thoughts of suicide. Barber wrote the piece for his creative writing class. "It's the nanny state ran amock; political correctness to the extreme," said Barber in a phone interview with timesnews.net. "Nobody goes after Stephen King, nobody...

Steve Barber knew his fictional essay about a suicidal student bent on murder would generate quite a buzz within his creative-writing class at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. It was the expulsion from school and the weekend spent locked up in a mental health ward for observation that caught the 23-year-old freshman and former U.S. Navy sailor off guard. The three guns that campus police later report finding in his car while parked in a school lot Feb. 29 didn’t help his cause either. “I never intended for him [the creative-writing professor] to feel threatened by it. I...

Signature phrase of Marshfield candidate upsets Imam Talal EidMARSHFIELD - The slogan appears right below Steve Barber’s name every time he posts a message on the popular Marshfield Forum online discussion board: ‘‘Killem All Let Allah Sort Em Out.’’ Where other forum users punctuate their messages with quotations or song lyrics, Barber uses a contemporary riff on ‘‘Kill ’Em All, Let God Sort ’Em Out,’’ a war cry coined by U.S. special operations forces during the Vietnam War. ‘‘I figure we’re fighting Muslims. ‘Allah’ works,’’ Barber said. Barber, 49, is a retired Army staff sergeant who, for the third time,...