Christine’s Lesson in Insignificance

Reputed virgin and possible challenger to Senator Joe Biden’s US Senatorial seat Christine O’Donnell has dropped her lawsuit against her former employer Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ICI) for “gender discrimination” after they fired her. The institute is a conservative think tank located in Delaware. O’Donnell is a conservative Republican who ran an impressive write-in candidacy in 2006 against Senator Tom Carper. Her reason for dropping the lawsuit sounds downright liberal:

In her letter to the court and in an interview Monday, O'Donnell said she was dropping the lawsuit for financial reasons. "I am not an organization with unlimited finances and resources with an insurance company like ISI," she said....

"It is frustrating because it does make it seem like justice costs money," she said. "Unfortunately, liberty is free but justice has a high price." (link)

How nice of Christine to notice.

Does she find a contradiction between her conservative views and having filed a lawsuit against a former employer? Oddly not:

On Monday, she said she saw no conflict between her conservative views and her legal action against ISI, saying conservatives believe in civil rights. (link)

I wonder what rights those would be from a conservative perspective. Does she disagree with Delaware’s “at-will” law that allows employers to fire an employee for any reason whatsoever as long as the reason remains unstated or the reason doesn’t violate state or federal law (link)?

But that is just the law. What civil rights give her justification to sue a former employer, except for breach of contract, as a conservative? She isn’t a proprietor of ICI. Doesn’t she believe that proprietorship gives an employer the right to hire and fire for any reason whatsoever?

Or does the sensible intuition lurk in the recesses of O’Donnell’s pretty head that since, for most people, our society is structured to require employment for survival and to thrive that no employer should have the right to threaten one’s survival or capacity to thrive without a compelling reason to do so?

Hopefully, O’Donnell will develop her intuition further and realize that when working individuals can’t afford the expense of justice through lawsuits, they naturally join forces and form unions. It’s the only way in our society that most of the “little people” in the workplace can make themselves significant.