Ward Churchill
This letter has not been edited.
Read the 1st Amendmenbt. He can't say whatever and whenever he wants. The first is not absolute, read it. As every child knows, you can't yell "fire " in a crowded theatre.
Posted by hank on July 30, 2007 05:03 PM
hank,hank,hank,
Every child also knows that he CAN say "Eichmann" anytime he damn well pleases.
Except when a certain president has turned too many Americans into frightened little girls.
Anyone who pays attention and knows the republican M.O can see that the only reason they went after Ward Churchill is because he got too close to the truth.
Fascists just HATE it when that happens.
Posted by dmz on July 30, 2007 08:05 PMSo, dmz,
You agree with Ward Churchill when he says things like, “Why did it take a bunch of Arabs to do what we should have done a long time ago?” Or when he told a kid at an anarchists convention how to “do an action” telling him he had a trigger finger and ought to use it. Is that the sort of “truth” you think Churchill should be allowed to express? He can say “Eichmann” any time he wants but he cannot encourage students to overthrow our government while he is teaching on government time.
You may not realize this or you choose to ignore it, but college professors are sworn to uphold certain vows of allegiance to the United States. They are actually government employees and government employees are held to a much different standard than normal citizens when it comes to what can be said. If Churchill had been working at say, an insurance agency when he said what he said, he may not have been fired, unless his boss didn’t want him talking that way while on that job as well. The First Amendment only says that Congress shall make no laws restricting freedom of speech. It says nothing about what a university shall do to someone spewing controversial bilge.
By the way, I highly doubt that “a certain president has turned too many Americans into frightened little girls,” nor did that have anything at all to do with Churchill’s dismissal.
Churchill was not fired for what he said, although he really could have been fired for what he said. He was fired for a few other reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with speech. So, you can stop the whining about his freedom of speech. If a cop thinks someone is drunk, but finds they are not after performing a roadside sobriety test, they could still easily arrest the person has violated certain laws. The cop would not say, “Well, I cannot arrest you for drunk driving so I’ll overlook the fact that you are in illegal possession of a firearm and you have a suspension on your drivers license and you have a forged drivers license.”