“A state lawmaker is calling on the University of Wisconsin-Madison to fire a part-time instructor who has spoken out on his beliefs that figures in the U.S. government, not al-Qaida, were behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,” reports WFRV, a CBS affiliate.

Barret made the mistake of calling a local radio show where he “disputed most of the widely accepted information about the attacks,” information a large percentage of the public now holds to be suspicious, although you wouldn’t know it if you watched WFRV or CBS. Barrett “acknowledged discussing Sept. 11 in teaching classes, but said it was only to give both sides of the issue, not to convert anyone to his point of view,” a major faux pas, or rather a political crime punished by denying thought criminals employment.

“Mr. Barrett is free to stand on the street corner and advocate his nutty left-wing views. However, the taxpayers and tuition-paying families shouldn’t pay this man one cent to perform his voodoo in a UW classroom,” complained Rep. Stephen Nass, a Republican, or neocon.

In Bushzarro world, the laws of physics (i.e. kerosene fires are unable to melt steel and drag-producing “pancaked” buildings do not free fall) are considered to be “nutty left-wing views” and “voodoo,” sort of like Lactantius writing that if the earth was a sphere everybody would fall off, thus it stands to reason the earth is flat.

But never mind. You can’t fight these people with logic, so pervasive is the nine eleven myth, especially in government.

As Jay Bennish, a teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado, learned, if you want to keep your job, not end up stocking shelves at Walmart, it is best to moderate your views, thus short shrifting students (and the use of the noun “shrift” here is appropriate, as it comes from Old English word scrift, which means penance or absolution, acts required of Bennish).

Bennish made the mistake of criticizing our unitary decider after his State of the Union speech in February and also offered a couple unacceptable reductio ad absurdum arguments about U.S. foreign policy, both punishable offenses after “everything changed” on nine eleven.

David Lane, Bennish’s attorney, told the media the teacher would change his style of teaching. “Upon returning to the classroom, Bennish conducted a discussion on the controversy and explained the nature of his future classes, which would focus less on classroom discussion and more on textbook-based assignments,” Wikipedia summarizes. “Students lamented the change; Leia Schiavone commented: ‘It’s a lot more fun to learn from Mr. Bennish from his lectures than from the textbook. The textbook doesn’t have everything that’s going on in the world. We’re not going to be learning as much.’”

But then what’s fun got to do with it, or for that matter learning?

It’s all about conforming to cynical and manipulative hallucinations engineered by our rulers, scary campfire stories designed to win our consent, not that the corporate oligarchy explicitly needs our consent, as they will do whatever they want (as an example, note Bush disobeying 750 laws since “taking office,” that is to say since he was appointed to office the first time, stealing office the second time around).

Barrett and Bennish are dangerous because they have access to the minds of children, otherwise they would indeed be considered nutty “leftwingers” standing on street corners, haranguing a mostly indifferent public.

In Bushzarro world, however, even climbing up on a public soapbox, at one time a venerated American tradition under the First Amendment, is becoming illegal, a punishable offense, as free speech is anathema to dictatorship.

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