The Southern Illinois Liberal - equal time.

On the West Coast there are many liberals, but most of them work for a living a real companies. It makes them capitalists (to some extent) and the prominent ones are often business owners. There is a common belief in people working hard, firing people who don't work, attempting to make money and realizing that people who do work harder deserve more. Imagine your standard liberal agenda of equality for all, social responsibility, educational opportunities for all, individual control of their own body and property, but mixed with a capitalistic work beliefs based on merit. They is why the liberal/democratic "blue states" are doing so much better than the "red states" economically IMHO.

One of the main thing that amazes me since I moved back to Carbondale 5 years ago is the special kind of liberal that Carbondale contains. Here the liberals mostly work for the State of Illinois and not for private companies. Many of our liberals have never worked for a company, never been rewarded for working harder, never seen the level of performance required by leaders of real companies. Once you realize that the liberals of Southern Illinois have mostly never held a real job, the conservative's theory that they don't have a clue about business starts to make some sense.

A quote from a "SI Liberal" sticks with me - "no one should make more than $200,000 per year!" What the heck? When do educated people start to hold it against people who make more money and work harder? I would suggest that SIU stop being a communist state and switch over to a merit based system, but the first thing you would have to do is have competent leadership and that isn't going to happen without replacing almost everyone who is in the pecking order at the level of Dean and above.

Of course, your comments are welcome.