Originally posted on Sept. 16, 2006.

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With the start of the new school year, the University of Wyoming has welcomed a new editorial staff, and one editorial member has already stood out for outlandish and vacuum-headed editorial columns...thereby alerting everyone who reads the Branding Iron that she is a full-fledged Liberalista.

From her first few columns, it sounds like Ms. Humphrey is going to be a "guest" of this blog an ample number of times.

On Sept. 7th, Humphrey wrote an editorial entitled "President Bush: the next Hitler?", where she made the statement that the Bush administration has copied many of the techniques used by the Third Reich in their detention of terrorist suspects, and the use of tapping the phone conversations coming in to American citizens from people who could very well be Al Qaeda followers.

Humphrey uses the BBC website to back her statement that the phone tracking program is a violation of American citizens' rights. The New York Times should be dismayed that Humphrey did not get her information from their pages, but instead had to resort to going to the BBC...a trully honest and objective source with no hint of anti-Americanism whatsoever...(insert sarcasm here).

Ms. Humphrey apparently feels that the rights of the terrorists trump the rights of American citizens to remain alive in our own country, because make no mistake...while Ms. Humphrey rants about how the terrorists' "rights" are being violated under US laws that don't apply to people who are not citizens, while she argues against programs that monitor the phone calls of terrorists who are calling in to the United States, those same terrorists are continuing to plot ways to attack the United States and the West, and to do so in ways that would make 9/11 look insignificant.

While commenting on the transfer of fourteen high-level Al Qaeda prisoners from CIA custody to the US prison at Guantanamo, President Bush said that the CIA uncovered plots in the works to attack Western nations...he was specific when he mentioned a foiled attack at Heathrow Airport, in London.

The United States is bending over backwards to give the terrorists rights they don't have so that everything is on the up-and-up with the world community. By doing so, we risk not getting the information we need to prevent a future terrorist attack simply because we were not able to use sufficient pressure on the terrorists to get them to divulge what information they have. If we are hit again, part of the blame will go to Ms. Humphrey and the rest of the Liberalistas, who figure we shouldn't be mean to the terrorists.

As if this first editorial wasn't enough, Ms. Humphrey follows up on Sept. 14 with a column entitled "Universities are for Exploring Thought, Not Controlling It", where she launches on an air-headed tirade against Christian culture.

Her first statement reads: "Everyday students walk on campus and encounter missionaries," as if we were talking about Nigeria and not Wyoming. I graduated from the Univeristy of Wyoming in 2004 and I can tell you I had to fight off the hordes of people waving Bibles in my face like mad just trying to save my soul.

Aside from the utter stupidity of that statement, Ms. Humphrey continues on to whine about the effect of such outreach on the college campus, saying missionaries "colonize the minds of those they convert and ruin culture."

Humphrey asks: "Has the UW become a place where free thought no longer exists within the student population? Must we be subjugated to propaganda telling us how we should feel about our actions, not allowing us to explore them?"

The problem here is that Ms. Humphrey only believes that freedom of speech is good so long as she is not inconvenienced by it. As long as no voice that could be in any way construed as objectionable to her reaches her ears, she is fine with freedom of speech. However, if anyone dares to express a Christian view to her, she is offended.

Ms. Humphrey seems to forget the unwritten rule of the First Amendment. We all have freedom of speech, that is true...but none of us are entitled to an audience. This is true in two places...

I can hear you now, saying "Well, if you don't like Ms. Humphrey, why are you reading her columns, why are you writing about her?" To that, I respond that I am a History graduate, an observer of the news of the day, a political policywonk, and a blog writer. I hope that all of this will one-day become a paying job, and as such, it is my job to look out for things to report on, and to talk about. Ms. Humphrey, as a person who's views might infect young people through the printed pages of the Branding Iron, is someone I should be reading if I am to be able to make a thoughful reply.

More important to the conversation however is the ability we all have to simply walk away from a conversation that we object to. There is nothing holding Ms. Humphrey or anyone else to the vicinity of the "missionaries" as they work the crowd. In fact, on the way to a job interview on the campus, I was stopped by the Gideons, who were doing what they normally do...handing out Bibles to any that wanted one. I didn't have the time to stop right away, but I went back after the interwiew and had a good conversation with them. See, I excercised my right not to be an audience in one instance, and my right of free speech in the second.

Finally on this subject, Ms. Humphrey suggests that the presence of "missionaries" on the campus ruins culture. She rightly supports the idea that students should be exposed to other cultures, but then she misses one rather vital point. Religion is a huge part of cultures all over the world, from Japaese shintoism, to Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, etc. When an American visits a foreign place, they should be encouraged to see for themselves the richness that religion adds to that culture. Ms. Humphrey also misses the fact that other people from around the world come to the University of Wyoming, and while they are here, they may wish to see what American religion is like...in other words, they may want to see for themselves the richness that religion adds to OUR culture.

Ms. Humphrey can plug her ears and rush past the Navigators' booth all she wants, but this does not entitle her to impose her own fascist brand of anti-religion on everyone else. She is so quick to label President Bush a fascist, and to accuse Christian religion of subjugating the minds of UW students...let's see how she likes the label when it is applied to her.

As with anyone else who appears as a "guest" of this blog, Ms. Humphrey is welcome to respond. If she does, her comments will be printed in their entirety.

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John B.
Blog Guy

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