Politics & Power Quote by Mort Kondracke

Better to keep the villain on payroll, Kondracke implies, because nothing rallies a movement like a convenient monster. His line about Ward Churchill being “more valuable... employed than unemployed” is a cold-blooded piece of political media logic: don’t silence the caricature, showcase it. The “academic left” becomes not a community of argument but a brand, and Churchill a product placement for its enemies.

The intent isn’t primarily to weigh Churchill’s scholarship or even his notorious post-9/11 rhetoric; it’s to weaponize him as evidence. Kondracke’s phrasing borrows the language of cost-benefit analysis (“valuable”) and swaps the usual civil-liberties debate for a campaign calculus. If Churchill is fired, he can be recast as a martyr of free speech and tenure. If he stays, he’s an endlessly replayable clip package: the professor who “proves” the campus left is insane.

“Living window” is the tell. It invites readers to treat a single person as a transparent view into an entire ideology, skipping the inconvenient work of distinguishing fringe provocation from mainstream thought. The subtext is that the left’s failures are not merely strategic but terminal: “intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy” stacks indictments to foreclose nuance. That triad isn’t analysis; it’s a verdict delivered with the rhythm of a closing argument.

Context matters: the early-2000s Churchill controversy unfolded amid post-9/11 nationalism, campus culture-war anxieties, and conservative efforts to turn universities into a symbolic battlefield. Kondracke isn’t just commenting on Churchill. He’s describing how modern punditry converts scandal into a reusable moral narrative.