Saturday, April 4, 2009

Messed Up Priorities

I found out today that apparently it's your right as a state employees in Colorado, to be able to call 9-11 victims "Little Eichmanns." Ward Churchill, an insane "ethnic studies" professor at the University of Colorado wrote that 9-11 victims were "Little Eichmanns" and unsurprisingly got fired from his job. He filed a lawsuit and won his job back.

Even conservative academics, like these folks, seem to be defending him on the grounds of "academic freedom." Are they as loopy as he is? Taxpayer money is funding universities during hard economic times and giving away lifetime employees to nutjobs who should be living with the Taliban in the hills of Pakistan eating cockroaches and running for their lives from predator drones, not smoking pot in Boulder.

In the meantime we continue to give people who've made all sort of mistakes, like homeowners and bankers bailouts and bonuses.

Bill Clinton famously said that he wanted to reward people who "played by the rules." Well someone has either been changing the rules or those of us who have been playing by the rules need to reconsider our lives. I've never asked for a bailout, a lifetime job, a "do-over" on bad investments or special treatment in general. I'm just a Midwesterner with a mortgage, family, job (at least I hope so on Monday) and a support network of friends and neighbors. Stop distorting the incentives we all should be living by and maybe we wouldn't encourage people to do stupid things again and again.

No comments:

Post a Comment