Over the weekend, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson gave a speech in which he tried to discredit the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes by basically calling him a fag. Ferguson, who subsequently apologized, has now written an "Open Letter" to Harvard, and like right-wingers always do when they say something offensive, can't quite help bathing himself in victimhood.
In the long run we are all indeed dead, at least as individuals. Perhaps Keynes was lucky to pre-decease the bloggers because, for all his brilliance, was also prone to moments of what we would now call political incorrectness.
Uh, first of all, what does something Keynes supposedly said have to do with gay-baiting Keynes? And second of all, gay-baiting Keynes isn't "political incorrectness" -- it's bigotry.
What the self-appointed speech police of the blogosphere forget is that to err occasionally is an integral part of the learning process. And one of the things I learnt from my stupidity last week is that those who seek to demonize error, rather than forgive it, are among the most insidious enemies of academic freedom.
Ay-yi-yi. Another wingnut who thinks "free speech" means "I get to say whatever I want and no one gets to say anything mean about me." So pathetic.
