Jefferson? Wasn’t He In a Band or Something?

CNBC editor Rick Santelli caused quite a stir yesterday when, in a moment that must have surely shocked Americans across the nation (and by “Americans,” we mean “editors of the Columbia Journalism Review”), he suggested the possibility that perhaps the founding principles of our nation such as capitalism and freedom were good ideas.

This is naturally an extremely controversial idea, and so he has been subjected to well-deserved ridicule and scorn.

Of course, you “want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage.”  After all, you are probably rolling in dough having purchased a house that was curiously not beyond your means.

And look, that was a decision you made of your own free will. Sure it’s not fair, but you’ll just have to learn to live with it.

This is America, after all.

Yes, falling home prices do make housing more affordable to those who would like to make purchases, but it’s much more important that those people instead help pay to keep others in homes they can’t afford.  It’s what economists call “creative obstruction,” a concept in which the government ensures that existing economic structures are held permanently stationary, propping them up from within, the better to guard against change and innovation.

Or something like that.

Anyway, we fully expect Rick Santelli to be properly disciplined for his intemperate outburst.

Maybe they’ll make him pay for his neighbor’s car loans, too.

Oh, wait…

J.