I’ve posted precious little on Ward Churchill except to defend his free speech rights and the concept of academic freedom. This changes today. His appearance last night on Bill Maher’s HBO show was painful to watch. Not for his laughable anti-American rants, his twisting of history, his ignorance of science and language, or his mumbling incoherence. But because it was exactly like viewing a traffic accident in slow motion; a tumbling jumble of conflicting ideas, non sequitors, double negatives, and logical fallacies that taken together added up to a totally wrecked reputation already suffering due to discoveries of academic fraud.

Ward Churchill, squashed Pinto.

Egged on masterfully by host Maher, Churchill made a gigantic ass of himself. Here’s some flavor supplied by Jeff Jarvis who live blogged the event:

Maher then leads the apparently inarticulate Churchill down his path. He asks Churchill to talk about “the blood that America has on its hands.” Churchill can’t get a paragraph out. Maher keeps leading: “Just tell the folks what you think…” Churchill mutters how the attack on the World Trade Center was not senseless because “anything that was that well-planned wasn’t senseless.” Anything this poorly expressed in senseless. Even Maher can’t take it…. because Churchill isn’t making the point Maher wants him to make: the blood-on-our-hands point.

So Maher says, “Let me do it for you… There was the bringing over of the slaves… Then we’re talking about the Indians in America, your people, you’re part Indian…” Churchill nods. And they add up numbers. Maher continues: “So we have a lot of blood on our hands… So then you talk about the first Iraq war. How many died there?.... And then the sanctions… I know we don’t want to hear this but the country of America has blood on its hands…. Not to mention in Germany and Japan when we were close to winning the war we obliterated Dresden….”

Jeez…I’m glad he didn’t bring up Hiroshoma or Nagasaki. That may have been germane to the point he was trying to make. Instead, Maher brings up Dresden and said we “were close to winning the war” when we firebombed the city.

The destruction of Dresden took place on February 13, 1945. Allied forces didn’t even cross the Rhine into Germany until the following month. Both Eisenhower and Field Marshall Montgomery believed at the time that Dresden was bombed that it would be April at the earliest before an attempt could be made to cross the river. Only a fortuitous circumstance-finding an intact railroad bridge at Remagen-allowed the allies to cross in March.

And the Germans were fighting desperately. Allied casualties from March 7 until the last week in April were 10% more per week than during the bitter fighting in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. To say that “we were near the end of the war” is preposterous unless you use 20/20 hindsight. I’m sure for the soldiers fighting house to house in the now forgotten small towns and villages in Germany it seemed as if the war would go on forever.

When the Third Reich collapsed, it happened very quickly. Russian and American troops finally linked up at the Elbe River on April 27th, 1945. Hitler killed himself 4 days later and the Germans formally surrendered on May 8th. Up until Hitler’s death, the allies believed that he would flee Berlin and set up a “National Redoubt” in the mountains of Bavaria.

What this proves is that Bill Maher is an ignoramous. When Dresden was bombed in February, most war planners’ estimates had the war in Germany ending sometime in the late summer or early fall of 1945.

And the interview (more like a mutual admiration society between Maher and Churchill) is replete with such examples of stupidity, ignorance, and out-and-out falsehoods. Here’s another gem from Jarvis:

And the torture continues. Maher brings out a 9/11 family member, Michael Faughnan, who lost his brother at Cantor Fitzgerald. He says the brother disagrees with Churchill but supports him.

Churchill says that by displacing profits and “moving labor to sweatshops in Maylasia you’re doing things comparable to what Eichmann did.”

It’s really not worth the intellectual effort to fisk such nonsense. But the above brings up a problem similar to a scientiest trying to debunk astrology or some other psuedo-scientific notions that have captured the imaginations of the weak minded.

In his book “Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” Carl Sagan points out the monumental effort involved in scientifically debunking most of the major psuedo-scientific ideas that permeate the culture. A working scientiest would have to devote many hours to “proving ” that astrology is bunkum or that pyramids have no special mystical properties. The scientific disciplines necessary for the debunking run the gamut from mathematics to particle physics.

Sagan points out the dangers:

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

Similarly with Churchill, one needs a scorecard to keep track of his idiocy. And it takes time (and for mainstream print media, space) to thoroughly discredit this mountebank of a man. No one is willing to do it. And that’s the danger of Churchill.

His ideas are out there. He’s been given enormous exposure to spout his nonsense. And outside of a few bloggers, no-one is calling him out on his scholarship or the accuracy of his references. And because of that, we have the spectacle of people applauding both Maher and Churchill accepting the fraud as fact.

The candle is beginning to sputter. And demons are starting to stir.