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Quote of the Day: Genuine Patriots of the Future
But then, in the eyes of the Left, a nation of free citizens, equal before the law and not necessarily equal in much of anything else save opportunity, does not much look like the America that “fundamental transformation” is intended to bring about. By their lights, they are patriots, just not “American” patriots. They are patriots of America of the Future. The country they hope to bring into being will be still be called “America,” it just won’t be America.
— Michael Walsh, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace
The Left will never be satisfied. They think they are working toward a future goal of equality for all, perfected human beings and flawless institutions. Their problem is that as long as flawed human beings are in charge, nothing will ever be perfect—including the Left and their aspirations. But that truth can’t penetrate their demands to transform the country.
The Left doesn’t realize that part of the beauty of human nature is our vulnerability and imperfection. It is out of those states that we strive to improve the world, not from a socialist, totalitarian doctrine that demands our compliance. Our unpredictability, which can be awkward on a day-to-day basis, leaves room for creativity, exploration, and dynamism. When we allow people to thrive and invent and experiment, they grow as individuals and we grow as a country.
Those are the true progressives.
Those are the genuine patriots.
Published in Culture
Amen. The left is convinced people are born good and turned bad by ineffective parents and a bad environment (not the green kind).
Some do. Others just think they will be included in the ruling class.
And in the end it comes down to a simple choice – should individuals be allowed to make their own bad choices or should a ruling class elite make their bad choices for them?
I’m sure that is a rhetorical question, @phenry. I’d say to them I’ll make my own bad choices, thank you very much!
George Santayana’s definition of fanaticism as “redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim” really applies to the mindset of the left, because if you assume they really do go into this to try and make the world a better place, that commitment quickly goes out the window when things start going wrong with their ideology. Whatever desires there might have been to make the world better is replaced by a redoubling of their progressive ideas in order to be proven they were right and their enemies were wrong about their ideology.
That’s why socialism ‘never fails’ — it’s always evil outside forces that sabotage it, and why opponents of the plans eventually must be written out of the political conversation one way or another. It’s also why when the latest attempt at Socialism eventually and inevitably collapses under it’s own failure to come to grips with the Law of Unintended Consequences, the people who ran the regime into the ground are declared to have never really been socialists, so Socialism never really has been tried.
(What surprises me at the local level in the U.S. isn’t how many egotistical pols who think they’re smarter than everyone else double down on Socialism and progressive actions in general when their initial plans fail, but how many people living in big Blue urban centers are perfectly willing to accept declining quality-of-life conditions in order to also show the ideology they voted for isn’t a failure. New York’s had a history of going up to the abyss and then pulling back every 25-35 or so years after things have gotten so awful that even some progressives can’t deny the miserableness of the conditions, but then you have other urban centers like Chicago and San Francisco where voters moan about the downward spiral, but simply think a change in politicians with the same ideology is going to improve conditions. They can’t bring themselves to admit the ideology they’ve backed has failed, and it’s time to change course.)
STAD
“Amen. The left is convinced people are born good and turned bad by ineffective parents and a bad environment (not the green kind).”
My impression is that as flawed as humans are, there are ineffective parents, or parent, mostly liberals, who make their kids worse.
Equality of opportunity? Equality of outcomes? What’s the difference? Right?
Incentive and effort. That is the difference! ( I know you were being sarcastic)
Excellent quote. It is what distinguishes us from the left. If I may, I could even quibble with the Walsh quote. We hope for equal opportunity for all, but even there we cannot ensure it. The child of a millionaire (perhaps billionaire now with inflation) will have all sorts of more opportunities than most regular schleps (like me!). We strive for that equal opportunity but there is no way to ensure it.
The Left is the Crown Us virus. Its virulence is variable, but the death count is horrific. Pray we never get the America they would bring us.
This is a powerful point, @jon1979, and so true. They’ll go to any point to make it work, by gosh.
As Conservatives, we know that life has no guarantees, nor does capitalism and certainly not equal opportunity. Success depends on the willingness to grab our opportunities and run with them; no one will spoon-feed them to us, not even rich parents. As a democratic republic, we remind people that some kind of opportunity is almost always there; there’s an equal opportunity for every person, but not all opportunities are equal in value, and they don’t need to be. We’ve seen rich people squander their opportunities, and poor people transform a small opportunity. But rarely is there not some kind of opportunity. I think you’d agree, wouldn’t you, @manny?
Clever and astute, @rodin.
The likely democratic candidate rejects American identity.
You’re sort of seeing that now with the Venezuelan situation. Maduro’s been written out of the Socialist movement by a lot of U.S. Socialists, because they know they can’t hide the country’s downward slide. But we are far enough now away from Chavez’s death that you’re starting to see spin that Venezuela was Shangra-La until Hugo passed on and Maduro took over, ignoring the fact the country was sliding a decade before that and went into free-fall in 2008, when oil prices plunged from $147 to $33 a barrel.
(As for the quality of life thing, I remember by 1993 my Manhattan neighborhood, which had been spared the worst of the city’s downslide, had now started to look like current day San Francisco, with homeless camping out on mostly residential streets and trash everywhere. The decay moving from the commercial and poor areas into middle and upper-middle class areas is what got Giuliani elected, because there was now no place you could go to escape the quality-of-life plunge. But you still had lots of progressives after the city’s revival wistfully longing for the vibrant and edgy city of the past, which many of them had the money to avoid dealing with the worst excess of, and as of now, that seems to be the mindset of the well-off in places like San Francisco, Chicago or Seattle.)
There is a famous passage in the New Testament about “talents,” which was a measure of money at that time. One servant was given 10 talents and made 10 more. Another was given 5 talents and made 5 more. But the “wicked” servant buried his one talent, and made no extra money.
Regardless how much we are given, we must strive to do the most with what we have. So the rich man’s child might actually have a harder time being “successful.”
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To watch you have to join. I was unable to get the point they were trying to make? Seems like unsolicited advertising, which I thought was against the rules on Ricochet. Why not try using your own gifts of speech to articulate the point here? I expected the point was going to be that all the other candidates are saying exactly what Bernie is saying. A bit of a disappointment to get hit with a big block covering the video excerpt telling you to join if you want to see the whole broadcast.
Please note: I flagged this comment.
I think that the goal of equality is generally a bad one, for several reasons. First, it is too easy to confuse equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, as Arahant rightly notes in #6 above. But it is worse.
People have very different capabilities. Freedom, under fair rules equally applied, is going to lead to a great deal of inequality in outcome. Many people can’t stand this, principally due to resentment, I think.
People make very different choices. Once again, this means that freedom is going to lead to a great deal of inequality in outcome. Apparently, this is not an area in which the Left wants to celebrate Diversity.
Sub-groups of people have somewhat different cultures. This leads them to make different choices, on average and distributionally, which leads to inequality out outcome, as noted. This leads not just to individual resentment, but to group-based resentment such as black-white racial resentment.
Sub-groups of people may have different capabilities, on average and distributionally. This, too, would lead to group-based resentment. Even raising this possibility is often enough to prompt the two minutes hate treatment. There is quite strong evidence of this regarding both racial differences and sex differences, although the research has been limited and skewed by the viciousness of the Left.
Basic human biology, in my view, mandates different roles for mothers and fathers. Even the idea of equality of opportunity, as applied to the sexes, is much more complex than most people seem to believe.
Perhaps the worst part of all of this is that a misguided demand for “equality” is generally used, by the Left and even by many on the Right, as a justification for a demand for special privilege and unequal treatment.
So I don’t like “equality” as a goal. I like “justice” as a goal — with the “social” on the side so I can throw that part straight in the trash.
Yes I agree!
Agree. That’s the parable of the talents Matthew 25:14-30.
I understand your concerns about “equality” being misused, but I think “equality of opportunity” is very important to this country. If people choose to re-interpret it only for their own benefit, I’m not going to concern myself. Yes, all the subgroups you mention exist. But it’s that diversity (in the best sense of the word) that is a gift to this country: I may be skilled in some areas and pathetic in others; this is true for everyone. It’s up to us to identify our gifts; if people expect their “gifts” to come from the government, they will be disappointed. I would also say that the meaning of “justice” can be manipulated, just as “fairness” has been. There’s no getting around the self-centered agenda of the Left!
This raises a series of questions that would be fascinating to put to SJWs: What would be the socially just number of soap brands? What would be the socially just number of lipstick and cosmetic colors? What would be the socially just number of ice cream flavors? What would be the socially just number of fragrances?
When you reach that “socially just” number, would it be social justice to prohibit someone from offering just one more… ever?
Even effective parents have a tough time countering the leftism that passes for education in our public schools . . .
My guess is that the very definition of ineffective parents are those who do not counter leftism in their children.
I’m not so sure people I know some very intelligent parents who have tried to counter what is taught in schools, and they have fought a losing battle. The difficulty is telling your children to put down the teachers’ answers on the tests, but to realize they are wrong. Some kids can’t handle that …