Our Next Topic for Discussion

National Security seems to have attracted no takers as a topic of discussion so I'll try something else. Everyone, no doubt, has heard of the case of Terri Shiavo, the Florida woman who had a heart attack in 1990 and has since been declared to be in a persistent vegitative state. The woman's husband says that his wife did not want to have her life maintained under such conditions; her family, on the other hand, disputes the husbands claim. In fact, the family goes further, claiming, as this most recent article reports, that Terri "is able to communicate and could improve with therapy". Today there was more legal wrangling. Terri's husband won a decision from the Florida State appeals court permitting feeding tubes to be removed. Just hours later, the family rejoiced at the announcement of a 24 hour stay by the Pinellas County Circuit Court.

Personally, in the absence of a "Living Will" or a "Do Not Revive" request on the part of the patient, signed freely and in his or her right mind, the state should err on the side of life rather than death. Furthermore, we're not talking about removing equipment that is artificially maintaining Terri's life; we're talking about removing food and causing her to starve to death. To my mind, this is barbaric and indefensible. I leave it to someone else to defend it.

Together, we are smarter than any one of us alone so what do you think?

As always, there are ground rules for our discussions, which are:

1. I'm looking for reasoned debate, not ad hominem attack.
2. Foul language will be edited or even form grounds for rejection.
3. Articles will be expected to remain on the given topic.
4. Articles should be no longer than 1,000 to 1,500 words
5. Please frame views that do not agree with yours in positive terms
that proponents of said view use with respect to their views.

Other than that, any position on the topic is acceptable. Please submit your contributions to me at revcraigh@yahoo.com.

Ward Churchill, Free Speech, and Academic Freedom

There has, as yet, been no interest in discussing Homeland Security. Perhaps that's not edgy enough. Very well, how about a discussion revolving around the question:

Should the University of Colorado fire Ward Churchill?

If you don't know who Ward Churchill is or why there are many folks who think that he should be fired (and many who do not) allow me to give a quick overview. Ward Churchill is presently a tenured Professor in U of C, Boulder's Department of Ethnic Studies. He also wrote an Essay on 9/12/2001 entitled "Some People Push Back" On the Justice of Roosting Chickens in which he enumerates what he views as the United States's crimes against the rest of the world in general and against the Muslim world in particular in order to show that the attacks of 9/11 were both justified and inevitable. In this essay, he says that the Pentagon is obviously a military target and thus the attack against it was absolutely justified. He also said that, while the occupants of the Twin Towers were "civilians of a sort", they were hardly innocent, calling them "little Eichmanns"--modern day Nazis carrying out a deliberate genocidal pogrom against Islam. They were, he wrote, "willingly and knowingly" feeding the military, whose crimes he writes at length to document and were therefore also justified targets. [Post slightly edited on 2/11/05 to remove an offensive sentence].

As for my opinion, which you can read in the comments section here [note: the article and many of the comments at this site definitely do not meet the standards of discussion at Continuum and I express my opinion in this regard in the same comments section], you will find that I was definitely against firing Churchill upon First Amendment freedom of speech grounds. I find many of his comments, particularly the little Eichmanns comment, to be odious in the extreme and for this he deserves to be shunned and despised by all Americans whether within the academy or without. However, he should not, in my opinion, be fired for them. Aside from the free speech issues, the academy has long had a tradition of encouraging the exploration of competing ideas, including odious ones, through academic freedom.

Recently, however, I have become aware, through this article, of allegations that, if true, are definitely grounds, not only for firing Churchill from the U of C but for his being banned from the academy altogether. His alleged offense is academic fraud. If true (and while the charges appear to be true I am not in a position to confirm them in a "peer" sense), Churchill has made up, out of almost whole cloth, an incident of US military genocide against the Mandan Indians in 1837. The source that he cites as supporting his claim appears to do nothing of the kind. The fact that he originally made this claim in court under oath in his own defense makes his offense doubly offensive: not only has he misrepresented a source to make wholly false charges against the US military, he committed perjury in the process. He also seems to have repeated his false claims at a later date, making up new details without attribution. This is precisely the sort of action that is, and deserves to be, a virtual death sentence in the academic world.

If this proves to be true, neither the University of California nor any other University should have anything to do with Ward Churchill ever again.

Update 02/10/05: This article, too (warning, it's a long PDF file), documents Churchill's tenuous relationship with facts. Again I am no scholar and have no expertise in the area of US Government - Native American relations so I am not qualified to judge, in any peer review sense, the truth of the claims made in this article. I, rather, provide it for you're study so that you may make up your own mind whether Ward Churchill is a scholar or a fraud.

Update 02/16/05: Apparently, Ward Churchill is a plagiarist, too.
What do you think?

By the way, I will also be accepting articles concerning Homeland Security, if you'd rather talk about that. Please remember the groundrules for articles and comments, to wit:

1. I'm looking for reasoned debate, not ad hominem attack.
2. Foul language will be edited or even form grounds for rejection.
3. Articles will be expected to remain on the given topic.
4. Articles should be no longer than 1,000 to 1,500 words
5. Please frame views that do not agree with yours in positive terms
that proponents of said view use with respect to their views.

Other than that, any position on the topic is acceptable. Please submit your contributions to me at revcraigh@yahoo.com.

Mandatory Health Insurance Coverage?

I have a quickly expressed opinion on the manditory health insurance coverage issue in California: if this idea becomes law (and it may, I live in California, I know that we will vote for all sorts of kooky stuff), businesses will be run out of the state faster that we can hold a special election to recind the measure. Businesses like argi-business will be forced to increase crop prices giving a national impact to the nation's food supply and lowering our exports. This is a bad deal, no matter how you look at it. I agree, more people need health insurance, but this is not the way...

NoBonus

Mandatory Health Insurance Coverage?

According to this CNN article, California lawmakers are considering making health care coverage mandatory, like mandatory auto insurance in Indiana, where I live, and elsewhere. It is an attempt to rein in spiraling emergency medical care debt and deal with some six million uninsured in their state. There are a number of plans being investigated. Clearly the State will have to subsidize, to some extent, those who are unable to afford coverage, placing a further strain upon the State's already strained financial situation.

My thoughts are mixed. I am for personal liberty. I am uncomfortable with the government mandating that its citizens do things. On the other hand, my home State has mandated Auto Insurance coverage, which I favor. Nothing is more infuriating than being involved in a fender-bender with a driver with no insurance, no money, and few assets. What becomes really dire is when said accident involves serious personal injury that can quickly become financially ruinous atop the pain and grief. I am for mandated auto insurance because I think it is criminal to get behind the wheel of a ton or more of steel that may end up maiming another individual without the means to reimburse the victim for medical expenses and suffering. Necessary coverage, for my car, is like $80 per month, which I gladly pay.

Health care coverage, however, is quite a different thing. I think every family ought to have health care coverage, it's the responsible thing to do but I view such a mandate as an infringement of personal liberty.

My question to you is, what do you think of a State mandating that its citizens purchase and maintain health insurance?

In composing a post or comment for our discussion, remember the ground rules which are:

1. I'm looking for reasoned debate, not ad hominem attack.
2. Foul language will be edited or even form grounds for rejection.
3. Articles will be expected to remain on the given topic.
4. Articles should be no longer than 1,000 to 1,500 words
5. Please frame views that do not agree with yours in positive terms
that proponents of said view use with respect to their views.

Other than that, any position on the topic is acceptable. Please submit your contributions to me at revcraigh@yahoo.com.