This is in regards to Rachel Levitt’s view, as published in Feb. 17’s “Churchill: The new American provocateur” column, of Churchill’s idea that 3,000 Americans deserved to be murdered by several angry foreigners on Sept. 11 as a mere “recontextualizing” of the attacks. Please witness with what ease academia can use academic jargon to justify mass murder! But such semantic and self-assuaging rhetoric should really be used against Churchill and his kind. Let’s try a little Reductionist thinking, shall we.

Churchill believes that you and I are all justifiable targets for anyone who hates the policies of the American government. But if we reduce this amoral illogic to its proper result, we must conclude that since Churchill has “invited” foreigners to kill us, he himself (and all who support him) must be guilty as those who died. If an individual is a cog in an evil machine (a nation) and must bear the bloodguilt for that machine, then how much more guilty is an individual (or a political movement) who actually wishes our death?

This way lays tyranny. But it is the end result of Churchill’s concept of “collective guilt.” It is this monstrosity of illogic that Ms. Levitt euphemistically calls “recontextualizing” the terror attacks.

I have worked in a university now for 16 years and have seen the birth of numerous monsters from its foolish, pretentious, dangerous head, and I have been aghast again and again. Only seven more years until retirement … and sanity.

Wayne Cohen

Info Desk Supervisor

Oviatt Library