The Supreme Court, in a morning of triumph for simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense, struck down Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s cursory dismissal of the Ricci appeal.
The justices’ time was well-spent in deciding reasonably, but the people’s time has been thoroughly, meticulously wasted — five years of litigation, public salaries, dry cleaning fees, careers, the damned paper and power used, and the wasted daylight. And wasted not because the case could have been wisely ruled upon in lower court, but because Mayor DeStefano, Judge Arterton, Judge Sotomayor, and the four Supremes in the minority constitute far too many people in successive positions of power believing in the risen ghosts of a dead idea.
New Haven invalidated Ricci’s test results because New Haven officials trusted the validity of leftist empathy as an ideology of government. On up the line, it found favor.
And that is all we are talking about.
Ricci does not happen if too small a number of people believe in leftism — “believe” being the troubling word. Sotomayor says:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
I would hope, she says, because she believes in leftism. She does not say she “knows,” yet she should, as the results are in, and as the Sun does not orbit the Earth just because one would hope it so.
In 2006, Arthur C. Brooks did a tremendous job of displaying the evidence regarding the non-existence of leftist empathy, displaying in numbers what most non-leftists already knew of themselves. Brooks wrote Who Really Cares
It does.
And it is worthwhile to note that Brooks defined himself as a liberal when he began his research and as a conservative once he had analyzed the results.
Brooks writes:
This book has shown that one of the greatest political hypocrisies of our time is the pious sloganeering about liberals in America being more compassionate than conservatives. This stereotype is false, and it is a disservice to our country.
Conservatives give more — much more — to charity, both in terms of total dollar amount and in terms of percentage of income. Conservatives also give much more of their time to volunteerism.
Independents give less and leftists give the least. This is true for both religious and non-religious causes.
But leftists believe in government redistribution as the best form of charity — that’s what leftist empathy is, correct?
Yes. But they only believe in it. Whether or not leftist, socialist-leaning laws are in place in a certain city or state, leftists still give much less. They assume that believing in government redistribution, whether or not it’s happening, is enough.
And in terms of volunteerism — say, donating blood, which even the most leftist state has never required of its citizens — leftists don’t do it. Conservatives do.
What about when leftist statutes are in effect? Like generous welfare programs? Surely that makes up for the loss in revenue to charities?
Not at all. Charities starve under leftist policy. European countries contain the least charitable citizens in the world. And the welfare recipients do worse under redistribution policies.
And it is interesting to note that a welfare recipient is tremendously less likely to give to charitable causes or to volunteer, while a working American making the exact same salary as the welfare recipient — white, black, Latina, whatever — is likely to be among the planet’s most charitable people.
If an idea, fully implemented, produces a nil change or a negative result — the precise opposite of its intended consequence — the reality of that idea as valid ideology ceases to exist. It carries on only in the hearts of those who refuse to accept the results as a valid indicator. In tennis, “wood racquets are better” simply no longer exists as a viable governing principle.
Pride and dissonance carry on with failed ideas, but results are objective, and good minds of science can testify to the validity and strength of the results, and once that happens the numbers of those who reject them will inevitably dwindle. For everyone else, the idea is dead and gone as a driver of thoughts and policy, existing only as a model of what we should not repeat in the future with our perpetually insufficient time.
So let’s not waste our courts’ minutes any more with questions of legality that should never have extended beyond the minds of the disappearing proud and dissonant.
Instead, simply remind all that leftism and leftist empathy — leftism being, quite exactly, an idea of how to create a more empathetic society — is truly dead and gone. It should only carry on as a memory of a failure.
Yet we should forever recall how it occurred, and how destructive it has been, while we encourage its remaining adherents to reject it.
The following paragraph stands as responsible for fomenting the American Revolution as anything else. Perhaps it can charge the abandonment of leftism as well:
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Paine wished to inspire revolt against greater government control — government control being exactly defined as more restrictive laws and increased taxes, as there is no other means of it. And, the far right being anarchy, increased government control defines leftist empathy and leftism itself. There can be no other definition. No policy of empathy can be enacted without more restrictive laws and increased taxes.
So what happened? We established a nation not of men, but of laws. But when the men faltered, you the leftists found fault with just laws rather than unjust men.
Jim Crow was enacted by the wretched who disavowed life and liberty — indeed, some who originally set down the words to paper held slaves themselves and broke their contract while signing it.
But you responded by losing faith in natural law rather than upholding it.
America abolished the absolute power of monarchy and succession — the arbitrary choosing of power and favor and its continuation by blood. But two centuries later, in a time of little justice, you found redemption by embracing the arbitrary bestowment of favor, and punishment, based on bloodlines.
You based your arguments on a dehumanization of the constitutionalists — you created the myth of a heartless, racialist heartland of whites. Yet you were the heartless, the arbitrary, the racialists, the believers in bloodlines before character.
And you shouldn’t be surprised — of course it is all true!
Of course you are the least generous, the angriest, the dehumanizing — you had returned towards the path of government power, and less liberty, a belief in which never happened over the course of human history without a concurrent embrace of those negative traits. You simply do not believe in less liberty, and more government confiscation of property for the “greater good,” without creating a dehumanized caricature whom, once unempowered or eradicated, all will be transcendent within your country.
You created the Christian right and the immoral wealthy, and called them stingy and uncaring, when of course you were the culprit, as always is anyone who creates a scapegoat.
Liberty will always be the correct answer — today in Tehran and forever hence. Your new creation, leftism, was a regressive notch towards man’s most horrible, fevered, utopian invention — absolute power. We outlawed your empathy for a reason — it does not and cannot exist. It’s born of dehumanization rather than heart.
The behavior you campaign for is what actually animates your political enemies, as it always is with the opponents of greater liberty.
Now, two hundred and thirty four years on, you would be wise to accept Paine’s challenge. Are you capable?
May you be able to put on, and not put off, your true character?
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