April 3, 2007
Guns and Speech VI Posted by John Steele Gordon at 05:20 PM EST Mr. Zeitz writes, “Mr. Gordon has changed the rules in mid-play. I provided evidence of a case in which a college was forced to cancel an appearance by a left-wing speaker because that speaker was threatened with violence, and he replied with a long list of interesting facts that have little bearing on the subject at hand.” I have not changed the rules by so much as a millimeter. Here’s what I wrote on the very first post on this subject, way back on October 6 of last year: “I would be genuinely interested in learning instances in which right-leaning students have sought to prevent leftist speakers from having their say. I know of no examples. Examples of the opposite abound.” There were no right-leaning students threatening violence to prevent Ward Churchill from speaking at Hamilton College. The faculty opposition to his speaking was because Ward Churchill is a scholastic fraud, unworthy of being heard by honest scholars. Those seem to me to be relevant facts. Certainly they are a lot more relevant than the fact that right-leaning students at the University of Michigan staged a sophomoric stunt (and exercised their rights of free speech in the process, by the way) involving BB guns and pictures of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. Six months ago, I asked for an apple. Since then Mr. Zeitz has brought forth crates if not boatloads of oranges, bananas, grapes, pawpaws, mangoes, papayas, loganberries, and even the occasional carrot and rutabaga. He has produced not one single, solitary piece of fruit that any reasonably objective person could call an apple. I’m still waiting, but I seem to be waiting for Godot. Mr. Zeitz writes, “Yes, Ward Churchill has been accused of shoddy research.” No, Ward Churchill has been convicted—by his peers, unanimously—of far more than shoddy research. He was convicted of “four counts of falsifying information, two counts of fabricating information, two counts of plagiarizing the works of others, improperly reporting the results of studies, and failing to ‘comply with established standards regarding author names on publications.’” Surely Mr. Zeitz knows that fabricating information and using other people’s work without acknowledgment are not shoddy research. They are the scholarly equivalent of capital crimes. Mr. Zeitz writes, regarding the two free-speech cases he wrote about a few days ago, “This idea [my distinguishing between the two cases and coming to a conclusion regarding one that Mr. Zeitz does not approve of] works, but only if we appoint Mr. Gordon the final arbiter of what constitutes meaningful speech. Of course, we can’t do that. Our Constitution doesn’t allow for it. (It might be possible in Iran, or maybe Zimbabwe. I’ll look into this and get back to Mr. Gordon as soon as I learn something.)” I’ll ignore the cheap—indeed typical of a junior high school debate in a less-than-top-drawer school system—insult. But what have I done that causes this freshet of gratuitous insult from Mr. Zeitz? I looked at the facts in the two cases, reached conclusions regarding them, and explained my reasoning. Mr. Zeitz, in contrast, seems to have simply adopted the ACLU party line as revealed truth, thus saving unnecessary wear and tear on the little gray cells. Mr. Zeitz’s reaction is to say, in effect, “He disagrees with me, therefore he’s wrong.” He doesn’t deign to inform the rest of us why I’m wrong to think that “Bong Hits For Jesus” is not in any real sense an exercise of free speech but rather merely the mischievous act of an apparently clever schoolboy. (One has to admire how the schoolboy manages to hit two educational hot buttons—drugs and religion—in the space of only four words. Of course, had he written, “Black Gays Demand Bong Hits for Jesus,” he would have hit four buttons in only seven words. But I digress.) Mr. Zeitz, in fact, seems to think that his conclusion regarding this case is indeed the only acceptable one. “The question is,” he wrote, “will conservatives who insist on a constitutional right to carry a concealed semiautomatic weapon also stand up for students in Juneau, Alaska, and Wilton, Connecticut?” I can’t speak for “conservatives who insist on a constitutional right to carry a concealed semiautomatic weapon,” but I just don’t think the student in Juneau needed standing up for and said why I so thought. Mr. Zeitz, awash in the moral smugness so characteristic of American liberalism in its pathetic dotage, only sneers at me for disagreeing with him.
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