First Amendment

Thank God for the people of Rhode Island and their refusal to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights had been added.

In the NY Times today there was an article about the possible/probable firing of Prof. Ward L. Churchill for an essay he wrote after the Sept. 11th attack on the WTC and the Pentagon. Not liking to accept all the information around the Professor without knowing what it was he wrote, I went into the net to find the essay and read through it. It's a very long essay and I've made it around halfway through, including the notorius reference to his comparing employees and employers in the WTC to a Nazi named Eichmann who was credited with genocide during WWII.

I think it's easy to place weight on an issue according to where the weight lies. More simply put, it's easier to add your weight to the winning side. However, I was curious in this case about the exact nature of the text being condemned. It wasn't too hard to find, and I chose the first website that posted it without comment or changes and that was easy to read. As I read it, I was surprised to find it representing a point of view which would be considered one of several fairly normal points of view in Europe. In much of the Arab world, the essay would probably be condemned as much too conservative in its accusations. Yet here, it is an essay which is bringing into question what may be published in the U.S. How can there be such wide discrepancies in the general opinions around the world, each part of the world considering itself more civilized and correct than the other?

This band of liberality/conservative-ness seems to shift across the continents and be culturally based, so that at some moments, what is considered outrageous in one part of the world is considered normal in another. Because I have crossed these bands several times and become resocialized to think "correctly" for a certain location each time, I've come to recognize them.

For those of you who are interested, the link to the NY Times article regarding Prof. Ward L. Churchill is:
University of Colorado Chancellor Advises Firing Author of Sept. 11 Essay

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/e...52072000&en=027c03db930ffed9&ei=5070&emc=eta1

The actual essay it is referring to can be found here and probably in many other places as well:

http://www.darknightpress.org/index.php?i=print&article=9

abri