“If it’s war the Asians want, it’s war they’ll get.”

So the headline reads of an inflammatory column, which ran in the The Campus Press Feb. 18 and has garnered national attention since then, culminated in the suspension of its author Max Karson Feb. 27. The article, which reads as more of a rant than a sound editorial, relates to an “epiphany” Karson had recently.

It began with his obvious attempt to portray himself as an open-minded intellectual who is all for equal opportunity. He recounts how a single Asian tried to return a vagrant basketball to the wrong court. Karson, in addition to two others, tell him he’s at the wrong spot. He looks quizzically at each of them.

Then, Karson wrote, the Asian said “OK” in “a perfect American accent.”

Don’t worry – it gets dumber.

Karson wrote in the article that Asian couldn’t believe that whites were right.

Oh, Karson added that, “And when he looked into (Karson’s) eyes, it wasn’t just irritation and disgust that (Karson) saw – it was hate. Pure hate.”

Wow. As momma always said, that’s some Grade-A stupid right there.

Karson then proposed a plan to catch the Asians in butterfly nets and put them through several rounds of brainwashing via stereotypes, including “eating bad sushi – with a fork” and his chastising them with “Why didn’t you people make enough Wiis?”

Supposedly, it was a humorous satire. There wasn’t anything really funny in it. The article was filled with vitriol, intended or not.

But what really irks me is how he expects to get away with this asinine absurdity. Probably the same way Karson defended charges that he said “there were aspects of (Colorado University) that made me angry enough to kill people.”

His father, according to The Campus Press, CU’s student newspaper, said in court that “If a major university means anything, it means the free exchange of ideas.”

He added that “Max was arrested for making intellectual comments to an academic discussion.”

Saying you want to kill people is intellectual?

See this is an all too common problem among people – they don’t understand what Free Speech and the Free Exchange of Ideas at a university mean.

The first amendment, which Karson is sure to call to his aid again, protects people’s speech from government interference.

Free speech does not, however, protect people from the non-governmental consequences of their speech. The government can’t censor Karson’s malicious language, but nor can he hide from the ramifications of his racism.

Others are free to respond to his disgusting diction, and if the editors decide that his words were beyond wrong, then they’re within their rights to fire him, which they did.

Insulting other people doesn’t create dialogue – just diatribes.

His diction doesn’t belong in newspapers, but he does have the right to, as he has before, create his own newsletter and publish his inanity.

Of course, he’s an idiot, and others have the right to respond to his stupidity.

I say, let him be heard, so that we know not to listen to him.