Once, back when our language was in its formative years, “outrage” was used to connote an act of violence. Something that was “outrageous” exceeded the limits of what was normal and tolerable.

But English, to the chagrin of many I imagine, is a malleable language. And so it is that an outrage is no longer an assault, but an aspiration. Being outrageous no longer means violating a social pact, but beating a path. The best way to get noticed these days, and it seems nearly everyone wants to get noticed, is to say something outrageous.

To their credit, most of these provocateurs actually have an agenda. That the only way to get anyone to pay attention to it is by causing an outrage (in its current meaning, anyway) is more than a bit cynical.

For the right, it’s as simple as saying that the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants” in some way encourages homosexuality. It doesn’t, and the jokers who hauled out that one probably know it, but it’s a nice way to stay relevant, or at least part of the news cycle.

Elements of the left, not to be outdone, have embraced their own pile of nonsense in the form of Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has made headlines for suggesting that the people who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11 were “little Eichmanns” and therefore somehow deserving of their fate.

It is a message that cannot be separated from the messenger, so it must be noted that Churchill teaches in the ethnic studies department at what is at best a second-rate school and whose own academic credentials are limited to a master’s degree in communication from Sangaman State University, whatever that is.

If those outlandish comments aren’t enough to stir condemnation, perhaps old-fashioned academic fraud might due the trick. Churchill is also being accused of misrepresenting the facts that he had attributed to scholars of American Indian history pretty blatantly, it should be added.

But whether it’s distorting the events involving a smallpox outbreak among Indians in North Dakota or, in the case of 9/11, pouring salt on a still-open national wound, we at least know where Ward Churchill is coming from.

He is a provocateur. He’s also a jerk.

And the joke is that he has drawn us into a national debate over freedom of speech and a supposed imbalance in academe. Both are worth fighting over, it’s just that there’s no reason to be throwing verbal roundhouses over this knucklehead.

Freedom of speech is sacred, but you still can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater. And we’re also entitled to deal with speakers we find insulting by walking away from them.

That’s why Churchill ought to be canned. By handing him his walking papers, the University of Colorado will not be stifling his speech, it will simply be saying they don’t want to pay for it. He’ll still be free to express himself in print, on the air, over the Internet, in any way he chooses. Anyone interested will be able to pay, or not, to consume his drivel.

Vigilance will keep the real Eichmanns or Stalins (who snuffed provocative speech by exterminating the speakers) from achieving power ever again, and to that end it is important that disparate, even offensive, ideas get an airing.

But let’s not conflate the right to speak with an obligation to have every harebrained, cockamamie, wingnut idea foisted on us and treated as legitimate.

Some speech just ought to be noted, then ignored.

Jonathan Diamond is assistant managing editor of the Business Journal.