Friday, July 21, 2006
Government tries to regulate free speech, fire teacher
Teacher under fire for his Cheney-9/11 theory
State legislators demand college bar him from teaching Islam course Friday, July 21, 2006; Posted: 2:29 p.m. EDT (18:29 GMT)MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- More than 60 state lawmakers are urging the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fire an instructor who has argued that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 terrorist attacks.
It's not that I agree with the guy, but why are "52 Assembly representatives and nine state senators" telling this guy that he can't speak his mind? The government is supposed to defend the First Amendment. Empty headed patriotism like this is a small step from fascism. Maybe people are upset because he's a teacher? That just makes it more important. Are educators only allowed to speak positively of the government? Yes, comrades!? STFU. Go to college, hear different viewpoints, form your own opinion--that's an education.
- "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Evelyn Beatrice Hall writing as S.G. Tallentyre in 1906 (Commonly attributed to Voltaire of whom Hall wrote a biography).
- "...if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility." John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
- "If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell, Preface to Animal Farm (1946)
- "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992).
- posted by Jasper @ 4:48 PM
