May 16, 2012 - 8:30 pm
Life can be very unfair. Hating unfairness and feeling a powerful, under-the-skin desire to do something about it can drive a person toward liberalism. But understanding that not all unfairness can be fixed, that some unfairness is a matter of perception, that flawed human beings cannot and should not control the universe, and that the cure for unfairness is often worse than the disease, can drive a person toward conservatism.
Why do liberals think it fair to take my money and stimulate billionaire bundler Kaiser?
Reminds me of an exchange from “Labyrinth”:
Sarah: That’s not fair!
Jareth: You say that so often, I wonder what your basis for comparison is?
That specific exchange is the reason I never say, “It’s not fair!” It was also the catalyst (in 7th grade, mind you) for my eventual development as a conservative.
elkh1: As Marx said: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The only problem: My abilities are limited, my needs are unlimited.
Let me refine that further: It’s not our needs that are infinite, it’s our desires.
Grown ups understand that there are no solutions for the human condition. There are only approaches.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Naturally, Rudyard has no injunction about not getting the bastards back….if you ever can, honorably.
” and that the cure for unfairness is often worse than the disease….”
For let me assure you, liberals have no issues whatsoever in being unfair. They are as fallen as any of us.
They are also often very good at covering their tracks. You want to know *why* the academy is so liberal? Because, in my personal and *unprovable* opinion (admittedly unprovable), they cull conservatives and others they don’t care for out early by giving them marks that can’t be challenged as outirghtly unfair, but insure they don’t become superstars based on transcripts alone. They know what they are doing.
I mean, how poorly and arrogantly profs treat grad students is a near-universal joke. Given such character displays (lack thereof), thinking they wouldn’t put their hand on the A/B scale for the most petty of reasons is not exactly beyond the pale. “Kill it before it grows” being one of them. I have seen behavior in the academy that would get a military commander relieved of duty…so I find it hard to believe that somehow maturity then rears its ugly head at the last minute when it comes time for judgment calls.
On an emotional level, as far as I’m concerned, shutting colleges down is an entirely acceptable solution. And on a practical one, competition in the academic arena is a good end state too.
I think it’s a bit more basic… Universities are regarded as elite institutions and graduates are thus members of the elite. Marxism is based on elitism with the “experts” controlling every aspect of the serfs daily lives. Conservatism is the polar opposite of elitism, with you being the best expert on you, not Obama, Romney or some other bureaucrat. Make no mistake, almost every university is a State-worshiping religious institution and Conservatives are heretics in those “Marxist Religious Institutions of Base Indoctrination”. If we don’t expect the Catholic Church to ordain heretic priests then why should we expect Universities to ordain heretic priests?
Wow, my lord of Monte Cristo, were you living my life along with me?
SO glad I got out when I did…
Life is in fact unfair. Our forefathers made a land dedicated to the principle that all men were created equal, and that the common people could rule themselves. They were, by and large, of Northern European stock, and of that, mainly British, and of that, mainly English.
They fought a war to allow that rule by common men to take place. They fought another to insure it did not perish from the Earth. They fought two more to insure the dominant force in the world did not become tryanny. They opened up their lands to others, to the point where their descendants–Northern European stock–if not already a minority, are going to become one ( and not by a small percentage either). These forefathers of some of ours, these men of Northern European stock, these new men, these *Americans*, were of course just men, and thus in their own innumerable ways, large and small, were as flawed as any other in history.
But these men, these men of Northern European stock, these *Americans*, are also, in innumberable ways, large and small, going to be able to forthrightly claim, on the day the trumpet sounds, the mantle of having been one of the greatest peoples that ever trod the Earth. And certainly the most noble.
I say all this because I have read this morning where the number of “minority” births has now outnumbered “whites”, for the first time ever. Since “white” includes those of non-Northern European descent, it should be obvious that the descendents of the original Americans (and I mean *American* as a way of thinking and living, not merely havng been born on the North American continent, as is the case with the aboriginal Indians), the descendents of those people that created the bounty and system that allowed others to succeed, became a minority a long time ago. And apparently now a fashionably despised one.
I am one of those descendents. I’m not entirely sure I consider this my land anymore. I’m not sure I have one. The old America, the basically-WASP America, and the old Americans who built it, seem in fact dead (and if not dead they seem dying), and the spirit they breathed may follow the exit shortly after they did/do. And it is the spirit I care about. It was supposed to be that you came here to become an American, not to become merely a economically-prosperous version of whatever your culture was back home.
If “whites” in general are to become a minority–and they are–and if Northern Euopean stocks even more so, then I want to say two things. The first to reiterate again it was the Northern Euorpeans who built this land for others to partake of, and no others. Not the Chinese, not the Italians, not the Indians of the subcontinent, not the Latin Americans. But the Northern Europeans, and really the WASPs. And they ultimately opened up their lands to others. That should be appreciated. Honor thy father and mother we are told. And so it should be—with fathers and mothers who made a nation. And this not happening today, which of course, is only an indication that a.) life is unfair, and b.) others are as flawed as others.
And so if no one else will, I salute the heroes of the past, because they alone did it, and we did not, and they should be honored for building the world we live in, and not despised.
This leads to my second thought, concerning our “Hispanic” brethern. As they enjoy their newfound political strength born of numbers, they should remember that their strength was mainly achieved illegally. They would do well to hold that before themselves the next time they decide something is not the way it should be. I know I intend to. You are not angels. Not by a mile.
I actually do not know if the American spirit, if American Exceptionalism, is going to survive. I’d like to to think it will, but I have to deal with the realities on the ground. Our elites act like they despise the nation, or at least anything of it before they assumed the reigns. Our higher educational institutions are nothing but rotted. The national media are fools, the people themselves enjoy sucking more and more off the public teat. There are in fact many problems that to me say that American Exceptionalism may have been born of one brief shining historical moment–the ability to start a nation in a wilderness, ab initio–and that just as Camelot faded to the normal brute force state, so will America (Leviathan being the common condition of man’s government). That two hundred, three hundred years might be the longest one could reasonably expect such an aberration from the normal state of man to be able to exist, and then it fades away, naturally and irrevocably, to be remembered only as a golden age. I don’t know.
But I do know this. I intend to fight the dying of American Exceptionilsm till the ship sinks under me. Which appears likely, honestly. But if that happens, the flags will still be flying boldly as she does so.
And maybe, just maybe, by being willing to fight her until she sinks, we might, just might, win.
In commenting on a foofaurauw over a test used to select firefighters for promotions, Thomas Sowell wrote. “The test is not unfair. Life is unfair; the test merely measures the results.”
Granted, that’s a hard notion to put across.
– comments. The stray didn’t die of loneliness. This should be a regular feature. Topical because yesterday there was a protest here against “standardized” testing, but apart from scrapping testing, no alternative proposed.