Ward Churchill is a confused man. He's gotten a lot of mileage out of milking an American Indian image, but the tribe he calls his own calls him an imposter. He told a Boulder, Colorado audience, "I do not work for the taxpayers of Colorado, and I don't work for Bill Owens." Then, without missing a beat, Churchill threatened to sue Owens if he stopped paying him with the taxpayers' money. Churchill has cultivated the mystique of a campus martyr, but just yesterday an overflowing crowd at the University of Colorado gave the tenured prof and former department chairman a standing ovation for his invective.

On at least one instance of apparrent hypocrisy, Churchill is actually, upon close inspection, being cleverly consistent. Of his controversial essay, "Some People Push Back," Churchill boasts: "I am not backing off an inch." Then he seems to back off from his statements, explaining: "Nowhere in there did I justify the killing of innocent people." Here, Churchill is not confused, just dishonest. He wrote that the people killed in the Twin Towers on 9/11 weren't innocent ("But innocent? Gimme a break."). Stop playing word games, Mr. Churchill. You did justify the killing of innocent people. You just don't concede that the people working in the World Trade Center were innocent.

I think the point of attack is to spead the word that Churchill's definition of innocent (and thus ruled out as a war target) so drastically differs from what so many people would allow within the scope of their definitions.

As a result, Ward Churchill's words are consistent with his justifying your death if you feed your family by going to a building that stands for something the Churchill doesn't like.

That he is not justifying the death of innocents, means that he leaves open justifying the deaths of people he considers not innocent.

Normally, we understsand innocence as not just what you or I are willing to define it as. Normally, we insist on a more objective standard, than one man's definition. If Churchill were so inclined another way, we should be able to arrest people on RICO statues for patronizing stores that paid insurance to the mob.

It's funny that he would redefine innocence, because the radical redefinition is part of NAZI-ism. The idealogues of the NAZIs rethought German society and popularizing that redefinition was much of their propaganda effort. The German people didn't start off reciting "Our Fuhrer" and reading the NAZI-rewritten bible.

It seems a fair trade that if he can call us "little Eichmanns" we may call him a "little Pol Pot". Because if going to work in a building Churchill doesn't like has consequences for which you deserve judgement, than so does being a clueless professor speaking out of your posterior.

Ward Churchill has a right that no one can take away (sorry George W.) he can say what he believes. His research on U$ imperailism shows why people might consider attacking this country. The targets that were chosen (WTC and the pentagon) are the finacial and military headquarters of the last remaining superpower. Sure the people were innocent civilians because they never saw the affect of their work on the world. Not all people in the WTC worked for multinational corporations..and yes killing people is mostly always wrong period. What pisses me off is that Flynn thinks that there is some huge Left-Wing conspericy and people are being sucked into this. Well let me ask you a question, who is in power here? Us left-wingers or the Right? Im gonna have to say The Right wing. People have see the lies on FOX news long before they have ever heard of the name Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill. Sure there are some of us revolutionaries out there who would like to see a change for the better of the world. But right now we are feed lies from a corporate controled right-wing machine, that allowes 34,000 childern to die daily due to CURABLE disease and starvation. We dont need this world, a better one is possible.

so Mr. Flynn, stop bashing people who would like to see an improvement in the world. Do you have any ideas on how to achieve equality? do you want equality? i guess not. Stop your childish rants.

"People have see the lies on FOX news long before they have ever heard of the name Noam Chomsky or Ward Churchill."

Ummmm.... Chomsky has been writing since the 50s---and blantantly political stuff since the 80s. FOX news is how old? "before"?

"bashing" -- My dear Mr. Harris, isn't "bashing" speech? (Don't we write or speek to engage in this activity?) Isn't Churchill's redefinition of innocence, a lot more than "bashing" people. Is likening somebody to "Eichmann" less or equal to saying that they are a clueless doof?

If you can be morally outraged at "bashing" somebody for speaking--can't you be equally outraged that somebody would throw open the question of where people worked to whether or not they were fair targets. I think I would have seen an apoplectic fit had Dan said that Churchill deserves it if somebody were to string him up. But Dan is not advocating death or justifying it--or even making it a question.

But Churchill is.

I'll give you the liberal treatment, shall I: "better"? Better for who? Who determines what is "better"? And how can one group determine what is "better" for everyone?

So what we are left with--with the liberal relativism--is that a group of people thing that anything is justifiable if it brings what they think--and what they think everbody else thinks or would think, given a chance--as a better world.

Meanwhile, you can't even make up your mind on whether people should be criticized for speaking or whether they shouldn't.

Thanks for not thinking.

Proof positive that disciplines such as "ethnic studies" and "women's studies" are as shallow as they are silly. It should be embarrassing to people with real doctorates that someone can get a Ph.D. in ethnic studies.

"Sure the people were innocent civilians"

Then unless you have a cogent objection to Dan's textual ana-lysis, you have to admit that even your definition disagrees where Churchill seems to have been consistant. Thus to integrate your view and Churchill's view (a good idea, if you ask me) he is justifying the deaths of innocents---if he does not classify them so.

Keep in mind, Churchill is avoiding calling the people in the WTC "innocent" and you are not. Where it seems that you and I and Churchill disagrees is where people are culpable for down stream effects of what they do.

But were that true, what about the downstream effects of what Churchill is saying. If non-vocal assent is culpable, what about advocacy of killing people that you are willing to fold within the term "innocent"? Does that not have downstream effects.

Does the slippery slope only work in the cartoon world of conservatism? That is, every time that a Biblical Christian defines homosex as a sin, does that result in somebody being beat up for being gay?

But it seems to be a free speech issue all the time for liberals and leftists---saying that people living under this system might have been as bad as the worst NAZI rank-climber (only less so to some degree) only needs to be defended fully by rights guaranteed by the same system? Because nobody really shoots fascists (except when they drive a plane into thousands of them). Whatever ill effects it has downstream should be separated from the speaker.

This is a reasonable concept--but needs to be applied across the board. You or I should be able to walk to the table and ask that if we separate our words from someone else's actions that we not be painted with the same brush. Furthermore, if reason convinces that words have culpability--or silence for that matter--then we are equally culpable, you lil' Pol Pot, you.

I am with Brad,

I think a significant problem with academia is its pandemic unseriousness about what it means for someone to become educated, and what a "humane" or liberal education consists of. "Ethnic studies" should simply be incorporated into several legitimate disciplines instead of separated out as its own pseudo-field. By proliferating new humanities departments based on social fads the integrity of the real disciplines (like history, psychology, literature, etc) are degraded.

I am reminded of Emory University wanting to set up a "Violence Studies Department" at the behest of Michael Bellesiles, the one-time chair of the History Department and author of the completely fabricated work of anti-gun scholarship "Arming America." He was found out for the fraud that he is (about my impression of him the few times I met him while studying history there) and the university rightly brought the hammer down on him. Cranks like Bellesiles and Churchill are the sort of pseduo-academics who promote pseudo-disciplines and this really gives room for silly episodes like this to occur.

Another problem is unreviewable tenure. I had one professor (again at Emory) who made headlines because immediately after he received tenure he released a book which detailed his "astral" journeys. Seems he claimed to have had several out of body experiences where his soul flew up into the heavens and visited various planets and stars. Funny that he timed these Shirley MacLaine-esque admissions for just after he got total job security.

Harris: Children starving? We have all the food and money to help if only the repressive regimes they live and die under would allow it to get to them. Should we push regime changes? Something tells me you wouldn't support that at all.

As for bashing people who want to help the world, Hitler also had a plan to better the world by murdering others. The road to hell is paved with good intentions of idealogical morons like Mr. Churchill. I believe he enjoys freedom of speech, but I also believe it is up to his employers whether he should be paid for his drivel or fired. He is not being stifled, just not paid.

Right on Webster

If the eeeevil GWB and his neocon puppet masters are powerful enough to purportedly hoodwink the world, start foreign wars, and hide all such traces, they'd be more than capable of making Mr. Churchill quietly "go on sabbatical." The screeching cacophany of ill-reasoned abuse of the Administration seems to suggest that the First Amendment hasn't been rescinded behind our backs. (Sorry, harris.)

But I have a few questions of my own.

1. Why is it that whenever somebody's absurd or monstrous opinions are criticized, somebody is certain to take more umbrage at that rather than what was said in the first place? The point isn't Churchill's right to his opinion; nobody questions this at all. It's the truth of his words.

2. "Killing people is mostly always wrong period," but why, then, is this not as upsetting as someone rebutting someone else's ideas?

3. What do you suppose corporations are made of? How do you suppose the noble working people actually eat? They work for someone, or employ someone to give a product or service. Some of those products are the foods we eat, clothes we wear, cars we drive, etc. How are corporations behind the starvation of thousands when their very existence feeds billions?

I'm all for improving the world and helping people; I just have serious doubts about doing so by destroying their means of living, and siding with people who would enslave and beggar them.

Oh and in response to what Robby said. If what defines the political right is a aversion to ever taking up the responsibility to help someone else, then label me on the left. Am I a liberal? I probablly would have been in the day of FDR or Woodrow Wilson. I believe strongly in private ownership, in preservation of the constitution, and personal freedoms. I also strongly believe in a United States that takes an active role in defending democracy worldwide, in doing what it can to help other world-wide, and in defending what is morally good and just. That is the United States that won World War II, that is the United States that won the Cold War, that is the United States that is fighting the War on Terror, and that is the United States that is giving of itself to help those Tsunami victims.

wow thats embarrasing. Wrong post. Sorry all. =(

Sounds like Chief Twisted Tongue needs to be fired, and than scalped by the very Indians he is impersonating.