Saturday, February 26, 2005
The Churchill Crack-Up - Part 2
It was reported yesterday that the infamous Ward Churchill had "assaulted" a reporter and his cameraman, when he was asked if he had copied a work of art and published it as his own. See my post on this here; and here is a link to the transcript and video of the altercation with the camera crew.
We now learn from the Denver Post (h/t The Belmont Club) that Colorado University is considering paying off Ward Churchill, in order to make him and this whole problem go away. Churchill's attorney thinks that his client would have to seriously consider an offer of $10 million to do so. The alternative, as viewed by a fearful and paralyzed university administration, is years of costly litigation with an uncertain outcome; the most egregious and yet easily imaginable one being a Churchill still on the faculty, made rich at their expense.
So this is what it comes to. Any affront to decency and common sense; to the sensibilities of majorities in this country; to the millions of parents of college students who end up fleeced in the ultimate "bait and switch" scheme, can be made under the cover of academic "freedom of speech." Let protected speech be odious and its consequences malignant, the agent is nevertheless empowered to threaten 8-figure exactions and at the same time preserve his right to insult and malign again.
The Belmont Club continues:
Belmont cites as an analogy the fear in the late 1930s that standing up to Nazi agression would only hasten England's own destruction. Another Churchill saw more clearly. It is only by making a stand against tyranny that far worse outcomes are averted.
I recently quoted Winston Spencer Churchill, and asked if we couldn't sense a certain deja vu when we read Churchill's military histories in the light of the events of our own day. Admittedly, I posed the question with the various aspects of the current war in the Middle East at the front of my mind. But WSC's admonitions would seem to have wider application. Who could deny that campus radicals do not now occupy the proverbial Rhineland?
In individual cases it must be allowed that the cancer has metastasized to the extent that the patient must be lost; in the case of Ward Churchill, the patient (Colorado University) may already be terminal. Yet a cure may still be found for malignant campus political correctness, if the appeasement will stop.
We now learn from the Denver Post (h/t The Belmont Club) that Colorado University is considering paying off Ward Churchill, in order to make him and this whole problem go away. Churchill's attorney thinks that his client would have to seriously consider an offer of $10 million to do so. The alternative, as viewed by a fearful and paralyzed university administration, is years of costly litigation with an uncertain outcome; the most egregious and yet easily imaginable one being a Churchill still on the faculty, made rich at their expense.
So this is what it comes to. Any affront to decency and common sense; to the sensibilities of majorities in this country; to the millions of parents of college students who end up fleeced in the ultimate "bait and switch" scheme, can be made under the cover of academic "freedom of speech." Let protected speech be odious and its consequences malignant, the agent is nevertheless empowered to threaten 8-figure exactions and at the same time preserve his right to insult and malign again.
The Belmont Club continues:
This fear [on the part of the university], whether real or pretended, is an impressive demonstration of the power of Political Correctness, a compound of legal menace, the threat of extralegal action and of retaliatory vilification that is not some figure of speech but an actual, material force. Even if Churchill is 'bought out' at $10 million -- should he stoop to accept such a beggarly sum -- he will have unambiguously demonstrated the value of leftist protection. That he could have survived repeated exposure as an ethnic identity thief, academic fraud and art forger; that he could have assaulted a newsman on television and withstood the personal opprobrium of the Colorado Governor, only to receive a fortune in compensation, can only add to his fame.
Belmont cites as an analogy the fear in the late 1930s that standing up to Nazi agression would only hasten England's own destruction. Another Churchill saw more clearly. It is only by making a stand against tyranny that far worse outcomes are averted.
I recently quoted Winston Spencer Churchill, and asked if we couldn't sense a certain deja vu when we read Churchill's military histories in the light of the events of our own day. Admittedly, I posed the question with the various aspects of the current war in the Middle East at the front of my mind. But WSC's admonitions would seem to have wider application. Who could deny that campus radicals do not now occupy the proverbial Rhineland?
"Virtuous motives, trammelled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.... The cheers of the weak, well-meaning assemblies soon cease to echo, and their votes soon cease to count. Doom marches on."
"This provided comfort for everyone..... who wished to be humbugged."
"It is a fact that whereas "appeasement" in all its forms only encouraged their aggression and gave the Dictator[s] more power..... any sign of a positive counter-offensive.... immediately produced an abatement of tension."
In individual cases it must be allowed that the cancer has metastasized to the extent that the patient must be lost; in the case of Ward Churchill, the patient (Colorado University) may already be terminal. Yet a cure may still be found for malignant campus political correctness, if the appeasement will stop.
# posted by mds : 12:27 PM
