l[lbo-talk] Churchill Sets Limits on Academic Freedom of Speech

Thomas Brown browntf at HAL.LAMAR.EDU
Sat Apr 2 16:08:27 PST 2005


Doug wrote:
>Given the history of the U.S. treatment of Indians, a horror story
>that keeps getting retold in the present, I think it's really weird
>that someone would devote so much energy to attempting to prove a
>particular incident of genocide didn't happen. What's the point,
>other than to attract attention to yourself and make white people
>feel better about themselves? Yuck.

Have you got nothing going on but ad hominem, Doug? Check yourself, my friend. Try to focus, and say something intelligent about the issues.

Have you never heard of the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Can't you see how fabricating a non-existent genocide devalues the very real instances of human suffering?

Do you really want to justify Churchill's fabrications just because they validate lefty prejudices? Should lefties get so disconnected from empirical reality that we no longer care about the validity of what historians write, as long as it makes us feel good about our moral superiority?

In response to your "devoting so much energy" bit, it didn't take any energy at all to debunk Churchill, because the real story of the 1837 epidemic has already been written many times, by every scholar who's ever looked at the evidence. Anyone familiar with the literature would tell you the same thing I have been telling you here. And your only response is to attack the messenger.

Thomas



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