[published on September 9, 2005 in my "Flatland Oracles" blog]
An Ann Coulter speech? Thanks but no thanks. A Christian college revokes its invitation. [Salon.com]
In addition to the Tim Grieve note, I recommend having a look at the article from Inside Higher Ed. Here's a quote which goes to the basis of this very conservative College's decision to retract an invitation to have her speak there:
Yet in the days after Harding’s announcement, a small group of Harding alumni began voicing their discontent on their blogs. Mike Cope, a minister at Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Tex., complained that Coulter lives in a “black/white ‘I’m-right-and-you’re-an-idiot’ world. If you don’t agree with her then you’re a bleeding heart liberal who doesn’t deserve to live here.” The problem, he said, was not that Coulter is conservative, but that her views are un-Christian.
That view was echoed by Greg Kendall-Ball, a graduate divinity student at Abilene Christian University. He cited comments Coulter had made about countries that harbor terrorists — “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” — and about campus radicals: “When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”
In inviting Coulter to the campus, wrote Kendall-Ball, whose father and sisters are also Harding alums, the university had “failed to uphold the Christ-like spirit that Harding seeks to embody.” It troubled him, he said, that “someone advocating violence, forced conversions, physical intimidation and who has routinely expressed anti- or non-Christian views is welcomed and given one of the more prestigious speaking engagements on the school’s calendar.”
Amen, though they forgot to add that such views are also fundamentally un-American.
And, as usual, the conservatives whose views are challenged piss and moan and fling about accusations of cowardice, because anyone who doesn't espouse their views is a namby-pamby bleeding heart liberal (like that's an insult) with no balls. The 'Right' are rarely that and it's they who are the nation's brats (between braying out their pathetic, babyish threats of intimidation, as if the way to build consensus is to punish people into agreeing with them. Which is really what they'd like, because they certainly aren't capable or persuading by a resort to reason). Note the threats of retaliation against Harding, which is one of their own, for daring to challenge their agenda on a single point. How very Right of them.
And---because it can't be said too often--- how extremely un-American and anti-Christian. Well played, alumni of Harding!
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