Redstate

I think the University of Colorado is wasting its precious tax dollars by funding his "scholarship". If he wants to be an idiot, he can do so for free. The Constitution doesn't require the government to subsidize stupidity or crassness. He shouldn't be incarcerated, but he should be fired.

...but it will not remove the dissent nor the motivations that forment the dissent.

I'm not arguing to quash dissent. I'm arguing that the public is not obligated to pay for it,  nor to provide a publicly supported podium.

Bill Mahr lost his TV show when advertisers pulled their money after his remarks about the 9/11 hijackers. The left screamed censorship which of course it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination. Censorship is a governmental act, backed by the coercive capabilities of the state; the network took away his soapbox when no one was willing to pay for it.

There is a very broad right, but not an absolute right, of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution. However there is no Constitutional guarantee of a TV show, or a college lectern, from which to exercise that right. Mr Churchill is guaranteed the right to utter the most ridiculous, outrageous, vile, stupid things and we must all honor and defend that right. However there is no obligation that we pay for his tantrums.

But that his ideas are 'junk' is most certainly grounds for dismissal.

Actually, I don't even think "junk" ideas are grounds for dismissal, much as I'd like to see him get canned just for being a sh-thead.  Many ideas on campus are found to be junk later, but that doesn't justify demeaning honest profs who have done their best to verify them, etc.

However, Churchill has almost certainly perpetrated academic fraud, which should be more than enough grounds to send him packing in disgrace (if anyone can be disgraced from U of C).  The fake Indian background, the fake Army Smallpox Genocide (tm), and if those can be so easily found, who knows how many other outright lies he's published.  Rather than a rushed dismissal, a long and thorough look at ALL his academic and political work would be best for everyone.  Might even be good for U of C, who now has to justify how the hell this guy got tenure, or even got on the faculty at all, with such poor scholarship.

...he'd prayed, because that's, you know, offensive.

>sigh<

I watched a few minutes of him speaking last night on CSpan. It made me realize how badly the media has covered this story.

I had not picked up before that Churchill's gripes centered around how the US has treated (and continues to treat) American Indians. Those are very real and very serious concerns. It is a continuing national shame.

he may well be a fraud by claiming to be an American Indian when he isn't

Do you have a source on this?

link But I warn you - it was just a quick google search, so I can't vouch for anything relating to this group's authority.

Try this on his lack of Indian heritage.

His fraudulent research.

I had not picked up before that Churchill's gripes centered around how the US has treated (and continues to treat) American Indians. Those are very real and very serious concerns. It is a continuing national shame.

You hadn't picked up on it because it's not actually his gripe.  It's just his latest attempt to justify himself. His gripe is the usual "technocratic Hitler" babble that wanders out of the intellectual featherweights who inhabit the cheap seats at the University of Colorado's College of Arts and Sciences.

Ward is a middle-aged white-man-wannabe-Indian with an exaggerated resume and a manufactured chip on his shoulder. He's about as serious as Krusty the Klown.

He has no real connection with the very real ills done the American Indians over the years.

is such a slur. I guess the word carries a connotation that is unknown to the dictionary:

technocracy - "A government or social system controlled by technicians, especially scientists and technical experts".

People who know what they're doing running the government--there's a crazy idea! Why would anyone want to try that? I suspect I need to study Hitler's Germany to understand the pitfalls of technocracy. When I chose it as a nickname for instant messaging purposes years ago, it just seemed like a cool word. (And since it's basically the only alias I've ever used that's not derived from my actual name, I plan to keep on using it.)

Perhaps it's a similar situation to the definition of liberal (e.g. "Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded"). They used to be in favor of changes. Now, they scream and howl if their pet projects are threatened with adjustments. Sometimes the meanings of words just shift over time.

Because while those folks are frequently decent, commonsensical people -- son of an engineer here -- they're most likely to decide that humans and human society can be tinkered with and scientifically order.

Which has been one hell of a poor idea, historically.

Thanks for the reply.

I wonder if the ill effects technocracy could be moderated by confining the technocrats to the executive branch. Maybe the Judicial and Legislative Branch could keep the mad scientists in check. And, now that I think about it, the President and Cabinet should definitely be selected more for principled leadership than technical abilities.

I guess I'm just wondering if technocrats could replace the bureaucrats. (Hmmm, maybe it's time for me to go to sleep...)

Jefferson said that the best way to fight a bad idea is to expose it vigorously to the light of day.

Are you positive that it was Jefferson? I'd love to have the exact quote.  I thought it was one of the early Supreme Court justices.  




But I digress, just curious.

...I'm sorry, but I just can't sit still for this nonesense much longer:

"...how the US has treated (and continues to treat) American Indians. Those are very real and very serious concerns. It is a continuing national shame."

Let's take the long view.

First, if the inhabitants of N. America had developed guns, sailing ships, celestial navigation, and so on first, and Europeans had been running around in loin clothes, practicing human sacrifice and worshiping corn gods, the former group would very likely have ventured out and inhabited the lands of Europe.  Just the opposite happened.  Is that somebody's fault?

Second, the pretext for this discussion is often based on the horribly erroneous perception that American Indians were sitting around over here peacefully co-existing, respecting the environment, and being at peace with the Great Spirit.  Hardly.  When they weren't cutting one another's hearts out for human sacrifices, they were scalping and enslaving one another in an endless series of wars.

Indeed, when white settlers came, they were often captured and enslaved by their Indian friends.  (Take a peek at "A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson", it's a Penguin Classic.)  And sure, whites brought smallpox and so forth to the Americas, but the Indians sent back syphilis, gonorrhea, and many other diseases and distempers.

Now, native Americans are getting rich from casinos, to which those evil, racist White people flock.

Of course atrocities were committed on both sides.  (Digression for the historically impaired: atrocities have been committed in every war ever fought by human beings.  When men [and women] are in a fight to the death, emotions tend to get stirred up [Duh] and people forget their more civilized natures.)  Anyway, there have been atrocities by American forces (and their enemies) in every war we have fought, e.g. Revolutionary, 1812, Mexican, Civil, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I and Gulf II.  Is it right?  Of course not.  Is it a sad fact of life? Yes.  It happens.  Get over it.

We, our government and ourselves, should treat native Americans with courtesy, respect, and honor, just as we should treat everyone.  But all this breastbeating about America's past is getting old.  The logical conclusion of such thoughts is that we have no business being here and should return to Europe forthwith, the former of which is exactly what the likes of Ward Churchill propose. Unfortunately, he's too much of a windbag and hypocrite to pack his bags and move to France, along with Babara Streisand.  Oh, wait, she hasn't left yet either.  More's the pity.  Maybe being rich, or well taken care of by the government, helps one resolve such apparent discrepancies between public pronouncements and private behavior.