"If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."
"[T]he barbarism of recent American foreign policy was bound to lead to a terrorist catastrophe on American soil."
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV), regarding liberals who wanted to go to Iraq to be human shields:
"I say it's just too damn bad we didn't buy them a ticket."
Let's recap. Ward Churchill condones the 9/11 attack. Thomas Woods justifies the 9/11 attack. Ann Coulter wishes Timothy McVeigh had killed liberals. Jim Gibbons wishes the U.S. military could have killed liberals in Iraq.
Four equally vile statements. And what's the response? Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly give Woods a hero's welcome. Ann Coulter is allowed to write a syndicated column and appear regularly on Fox News and innumerable other news shows. Jim Gibbons gets to vote in the House on important things like Social Security.
Ward Churchill? The right is screaming for him to be fired (with the exception of conservatives who believe in the First Amendment, like Volokh and Reynolds).
What's the difference between the four? Churchill is left-wing. The others are right-wing. I guess hatred and intolerance are only unacceptable from the left. From the right -- what? Business as usual?
Churchill made it seem cool that 9-11 happened, where as Woods said that it was a likely occurance without sanctioning it.
Let's say you flip Yin in the ear and Yin pulls out a flame thrower. I can say, "Kevin didn't deserve that, but you know what, he never should've messed with Yin, since everyone knows he's loco." That's different than saying, "I'm glad Yin metted out punishment to that little Eichmann." Churchill thought that the death of thousands of Americans was not simply predictable, but that it was justified.
Coulter and Gibbons were joking. It's the kind of silly things they frequently say. Now, Coulter *was not* joking when she said we should go on a new crusade to convert Muslims to Christianity (re: the column that got her shitcanned from NRO) -- Had you used that example, I might have agreed with you.
Posted by: Mike | March 02, 2005 at 05:20 PM
Coulter is crazy, and Gibbons may be too. Woods looks pretty disreputable on other grounds, but I think your (Kevin's) comparison of Woods and Churchill misses the mark. What Woods is saying here is the policy point that Churchill seems to want to make. However, what Churchill says -- and has refused to retract -- is that the 9/11 victims *deserved* what they got. (Oh excuse me, not the janitors, etc., but the bond traders.) That's not remotely close to what Woods is saying.
Posted by: Tung Yin | March 02, 2005 at 08:12 PM
I think it pretty easy to undestand why Churchill's remarks are exponentially more disgusting than the those of Coulter and Gibbons. Churchill was saying that VICTIMS who were dead deserved what they got. The other comments were wishing bad things on people that they disliked.
Simply not in the same category.
Posted by: joel | March 02, 2005 at 08:25 PM
I have to agree with Mike and Prof Yin.
Churchill's comment is pretty close to Coulter's, I admit.
But Woods doesn't seem to celebrate the killings and heap moral blame on the people who died -- which Churchill does to the nth degree, calling them Eichmann's. Gibbons's, comment, while uncharitable, derisive, and sarcastic, denotes a desire to assisting people fulfill their pre-existing commitment to knowingly putting their own lives on the line, so his comment is not like any of the others.
Maybe the original post could be retracted. I think that would be fair.
Posted by: visiting reader | March 02, 2005 at 08:29 PM
Lighten up, Francis.
Posted by: poster | March 03, 2005 at 06:12 AM
I find the comment unpersuasive for another reason besides parsing the content of the respective statements, although I do think there is at least a mild difference between Gibbons' statement and Churchill's statement: namely, that no one has suggested the bond traders, secretaries, and other employees at the WTC wanted to be put in harm's way, while would-be human shields are making precisely that statement.
More important, I think, is that the comment suffers from some degree of confirmation bias. It assumes that the criticism Churchill has taken for his remarks is a full and accurate summary of reactions to his comments, and assumes that the lack of criticism that, say, Ann Coulter has suffered for her remarks in some circles is an equally full and accurate description of the reactions to her comments. Neither, it seems to me, is accurate. A number of people on the right condemned Coulter's statement, albeit she was assumed to make it. And a number of people on the right condemned Churchill's statement but also defended his right to make the remarks as a matter of academic freedom or general First Amendment freedoms. It is a perfectly natural tendency to filter factual stimuli through the lens of one's own predispositions, but a dangerous one.
I should point out what seems to me an adjunct point: Coulter was condemned by some on the left for her remarks, and lionized by some on the right, perhaps less for the content of her speech than because simply making the remarks had made her a lightning rod (enemy of the left = our friend). Similarly, Churchill has been condemned by some (many, in fact) on the right, but also lionized by some on the left. A substantial number of people, including his colleagues at U Colo. and student groups around the country, have signaled their strong support for him or invited him to speak. And as with Coulter, the reason has had less to do with the content of his speech and more to do with the simple fact that he became a polarizing figure (enemy of the right = our friend).
I don't mean to suggest a precise parallel, or to invite a numbers game. ("Yes, but only 15% of the left are hypocritical, while fully 27% of the right are hypocritical!") I simply want to suggest that in ideologically heated moments, our filters tend to emphasize those facts that confirm, rather than undermine, our schema for viewing the world.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | March 03, 2005 at 08:16 AM
You'll have a point when Ann Coulter is making money by sucking off the public teat. I have no problem with Ward Churchill being able to say what he pleases--nor do many on the right. And if he can support himself without taxpayer money doing it, all the better. You want to get him a job as a columnist, be my guest: he'll do as much damage to the left as folks like Coulter do to the right. The people of Colorado do not get taxed to put bread on Coulter's table.
(Gibbons is an elected official: far from being protected by "academic freedom", he's subject to removal from office at his next election cycle. Somehow one thinks if what he said is as far beyond the pale as "little Eichmanns"--and frankly, I'd love to see you make that comparitive case--it'll be used against him to remove him from his job.)
And of course, you display the near tunnel-blindness and lack of discrimination of nearly all of Churchill's defenders. Coulter's quote approaches Churchill's in viciousness. But Woods? He's making Churchill's point in a manner that's not disrespectful to the (innocent) dead. Sorry, but if you're ignoring how Churchill said what he did, you're not making an accusation of hypocrisy, you're revealing a spectacular tone-deafness to rhetoric.
Posted by: A. Rickey | March 03, 2005 at 09:13 AM
Or, to put it another way: one would have thought that a law professor would expect better professional behavior from a fellow academic than one expects from a extreme polemicist trying to keep her name in the public eye. But if you believe a public academic should have no higher standards of conduct than a media freakshow, so be it.
Posted by: A. Rickey | March 03, 2005 at 09:50 AM
Ward Churchill is a fraud and a thief. He misrepresented himself as an American Indian, and now has been exposed as a thief by copying art and passing it off as his own. I don't think one can bring any evidence to bear the other three listed stole an idea and passed it off as their own.
One would think the art theft would be enough to break tenure, but it does stir curiosity at what other works he has copied. Perhaps he doesn't want close scrutiny for the skeletons in his closet...
Posted by: Buster | March 03, 2005 at 07:10 PM
Umm, Buster? Do you read the papers? Turns out Gibbons stole, almost word for word, the entire speech that contained the offensive quote. The link to the newsarticle is here:
http://www.elkodaily.com/articles/2005/03/03/news/local/news1.txt
I look forward to your passionate call for Gibbons resignation.
Posted by: Kevin Jon Heller | March 03, 2005 at 07:17 PM