Polito's Take: We were asking for it?

Consider the plight of John. He lives on a typical street in the quintessential American neighborhood. He has a beautiful home, a gorgeous wife and three brilliant children. He has a successful career and can afford all the trappings of an upper middle class lifestyle. John was not given these things. He was provided with the opportunity to thrive and he seized upon it by working hard. Joe lives next door to John. He is not successful and blames John for his misfortune. One day, Joe rings John's doorbell and when he answers punches him in the nose. Upon seeing this, another neighbor named Jack approaches them. He informs John that he is to blame for the attack because he flaunts his success and lifestyle. Jack claims that John's good fortune comes at the expense of Joe and he was justified in punching him.

In reality, John is us, Joe is the terrorists, and Jack is MIT professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal. This Associate Professor of Law and Development is also the Director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He penned an essay on the cause of the Marathon bombings that contained the following passage: "The failure by America to acknowledge its crimes and mistakes leads to increasing resentment and eventually rage. We get blowback." Blowback? Was that a Freudian slip or just some insensitive pun at the expense of three dead and over two hundred wounded by two bomb blasts? Not to mention that one of the of the professor's own community was killed execution style in some form of "blowback."

What we have here is another example of the self-loathing that permeates many in the more liberal corners of society, especially academia. These are the same people who believe the United States is responsible for all of its own problems. They fail to recognize all the good we've done for the world and instead look to rationalize the hatred of others. I've come to expect this type of reaction, but this instance is even more egregious. What Balakrishnan Rajagopal fails to recognize is that the U.S. chose to open its doors to a family trying to escape a war torn region of the world. They were provided with a safe haven, a great education, welfare, and all the freedoms afforded any American. Apparently it was not enough because their two sons decided we still deserved punishment.

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