Ann Coulter’s column this week does nothing to dispell the notion that she’s a blithering idiot. Of course, she’s attacking Ward Churchill, who is something of a fish in a barrel, but she can’t even manage to do it right. Here’s what she says:
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.
Sounds a bit like TownHall (I know: cheap shot).
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.
We are? Most liberals I know of won’t casually condemn Churchill because he pressed a hot button, but neither are they clamoring to defend him, because, well, he is a bit of a prick. Coulter seems to imply that he should be fired as the university’s ethnic studies chair simply because he’s not a flag-waving patriot, or he holds ideas unpopular with the right. Did Americans deserve to die on 9/11? Short answer, no, although our myopia helped usher it in, and blinded us from the best course of action afterwards. But, Europeans and Americans, over the centuries, have contributed to the deaths of countless Arabs. That’s not a defense, just a statement.
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.”)
Technically, she’s right. Except, she’s not. Freedom of speech, being a fundamental right, has been reiterated in, I think, every state constitution, including Colorado’s:
Article II, section 10. Freedom of speech and press. No law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech; every person shall be free to speak, write or publish whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuse of that liberty; and in all suits and prosecutions for libel the truth thereof may be given in evidence, and the jury, under the direction of the court, shall determine the law and the fact.
Does Coulter even bother to read these things before she sends her tripe to press?
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.
Because each one of those ideas in indefensible. Whereas Churchill’s, while perhaps tasteless and extreme, is at least founded upon a valid criticism.
[Churchill says that] Indian reservations are the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps.
I forgot Auschwitz had a casino.
Did…. did Ann Coulter just poo-poo the centuries of persecution that Native Americans received at the hands of European colonials? Because the tattered remains of once-rich cultures now operate casinos on the small plots of land they were herded into when the government took theirs, the widespread death, destruction, and disenfranchisement of the endemic cultures here in America don’t matter? I’m spellbounded. This is possible even worse than calling Democrats racists.
