gigi: Your inane comment is worth no more of my time than this one line.
Milo: Thanks.
Actually, I find the professor’s posted “apology” to be just lame and false. He stated that he did not mean to impugn the Cadet’s character. I raise the BS flag on that statement.
There is one, and only one, way in which “You are a disgrace to this country” can be taken and that is as impugning the Cadet’s character.
Had the administration of SXU any backbone, they would can sthe good prof.
Well, the first part of that finally came out right.
As to the second - if you want to see a mystical source, fine. But without farsighted leaders, a vigilant citizenry, and, yes, an adequate defense*, those rights are merely theoretical.
*not to mention the all-important role of a strong central government able to overcome local tyrannies. 
Naturally, I advocate a strong central government.
But there is nothing mystical about rights coming from God or nature (you do understand “or”, right?), especially when you define them as attributes of property. Do you disagree that you are born with your (note the genitive case) body and mind, and that these are what you use to acquire all subsequent property?
Well, it’s remarkable enough that he was made to apologize by his college’s president. I think it was the Washington Post which noted that.
I think they could can him on the grounds that he, acting as a representative of the school (via the way he signed his email) made the school look bad. But I suspect they’d be in for a huge heap of trouble. Even though I don’t think this is an academic freedom issue, he’d probably sue on those grounds and the college would be censured by the AAUP. Since he’s also gotten teaching awards, it would probably anger students and alums.
I think everyone will get what they deserve. This professor is now seen, nationwide, as a total jackass by millions of people. The school will suffers a bit reputationally for having such a jackass on the faculty. That might not go far enough for some of us, but it’s something.
Waverly
Once again, you were born with them. Your original rights were your rights to your body and mind. Whether you credit your birth to God or nature is your choice.
I’m not sure if you are being coy, or you think I’ll find circular logic clever [I don’t]. This statement brings us back to what I originally told you: our rights are constructs of our own minds [and bodies]. This whole exchange began when you attributed credit to “God or Nature” as if it were axiomatic that all rights were granted by some supreme force, and your proof was that bunches of people say so. Now you present a more mundane mind and body explanation that also happens also be my original objection.
Um… I agree with a lot of the things he says, specifically about how such things should not be advertised in the school environment.
HOWEVER he really wasn’t all that graceful about his response. His way of responding should have first asked for clarification on some points (this was just a general request) then a respectful decline to assist.
He was an idiot about it.
I’m curious why you don’t think it should be advertised in a school environment. Do you object to the format or is your objection content-based?
Here’s a description of the Academy Assembly:
What’s inappropriate about that? The Assembly seems to be the exact thing universities exist to do.
So here we are the day after Veterans day venting our spleen at some unknown teacher at some unknown college with references to the sacred blood of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines (and for all I know Coast Guards, public health service people and the Civilian Air Patrol). Disregarding the fact that a fair amount of that blood belonged to my comrades, someone missed the point that all that blood spilling was to some extent to allow our friend the unknown teacher at the unknown college to say stuff like this, no matter how stupid, wrong headed or subversive you may think it is. So the unknown teacher at the unknown college is a wrong headed fruit cake. So what? There has got to be something more important than this going on that will get your shorts in a bunch.
Actually, from reading the email, as quoted in the OP, and seeing as it was directed to a history professor, instead of say, the administration office of the U, the student paper at the U, a journalism department at the U , the head of the Poli Sci dept. at the U etc, it does, in my eyes, qualify as “spam”.
that being said, the proper responses to such emails are:
-
ignore it.
-
forward it on to some one who might conceivably care or know the answers to the questions.
Waverly,
What Lib is saying is that you ( and me ) as a human being have certain fundamental rights which are inherant in our being- that they are part of the definition “human being”. This is what it means when it says in the DOI “All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
Note that these are not the only rights we posess as humans. Note also that the passage is from the DOI, not the Constitution, and as such hold no legal standing, although the courts have been know to use “pursuit of happiness” as a justification in many rulings. The DOI is a statement of belief, not a document of law.
Waverly,
Here, the context from the DOI should give you an idea of what Lib means.
The rights exist in all of us as humans, the Govt just exists to ensure that we are not deprived of them.
Dave,
Your explanation makes more sense to me and is well worded. Still, I’m not sure how one could object to the observation that such concepts as law and rights are in reality human inventions. Perhaps it was nitpicking when I first made it, but I was surprised to get what amounted to a counter argument.
As beautifully worded as the Declaration is, unfortunately it is not self evident that all people have inalienable rights, nor are they a gift from the creator. If they are, people in some other cultures are well out of line, and their creators are sleeping on the job. What we take to be self evident in some nations is very much not the case in others; and whether we live out our lives with one God overhead, several Gods, or none, it is the people themselves who have set down and agreed upon these rights. No other force, entity, or being has played a role. Recognizing this does nothing to diminish the rights themselves, it’s simply being realistic.
But this is all way off topic. So I’ll shut up now. 
And someone else missed the point that our soldiers also spilled blood so that people could decry this sort of gibberish. Free speech doesn’t allow idiot opinions to go unchallenged.
Why is it that he has a right to spew his garbage, but somehow you deride those who disagree as (tho’ you didn’t use the word) censors?
Don’t you belive that the right to disagree is fundimental in the right of free speech?
Fenris
Shit, I left out the following illustration prior to hitting submit:
Some cultures view the group as more important than the individual. Rights we just got done calling self evident are suspended for the good of whole. The concept is so foreign to us that our gut reaction to be horrified, but it is nevertheless a viable approach to society. We can question, but I wouldn’t be so quick to judge.
What’s the point? If the set of human rights can differ so, how is it that we can refer to them as fundamental, inalienable, etc.?
Re: the OP
I find it ironic that this man railed against the very defense of freedom that makes such gibbering as his own possible without retribution.
Spavined Gelding:
**
And someone failed to notice that I made the exact same point in my OP.
:wally
(We now return you to the strange hijack about God-given versus government-given rights, which is inflating my thread count. :))
So where is the derision in my post. My point is that this is hardly worth getting as excited about as some of our friends seem to be. So the guy is a jerk. The world is full of jerks. Someone who is going to spend a lot of time decrying jerks is going to have precious little time for anything else. I don’t care who this guy is. I don’t care where he teaches. He is not my problem. Screw’em, proceed with your life.
And Milossarian, I did not miss your post and point, I just thought it would not hurt to restate it. :smack: and :rolleyes:
Right back to you.
Quite right. And I knew all along that this was your position and belief. That’s why I was a bit taken aback that you’d post an implicit endorsement of that particular bit of glurge above.
Can you see that there could be a difference between expressing one’s views and hurling insults at an individual that one does not know?