Courtesy of Uncommon Descent, download it from here. Print it out, study it, and let’s see how many appear in the upcoming months (from both sides of the aisle) of electioneering.
Dr. Thomas Sowell’s most recent article of the above title hits the nail on the head, this time comparing a delightful and thought provoking book with the reality challenged, alleged thinking found in liberalism. Once again we have clearly demonstrated how fantasy collides with said reality when liberals try to foist their ideas upon the Land of the Living. (You can find some of my favorite Lewis Carroll quotes on my Quotable Quotes page. I’ve taken the liberty of inserting a few into the text below, hopefully in enlightening spots!) Meanwhile, enjoy this latest offering from one of my favorite anti-idiotarians!
~~~
"Alice in Wonderland" was written by a professor who also wrote a book on symbolic logic. So it is not surprising that Alice encountered not only strange behavior in Wonderland, but also strange and illogical reasoning — of a sort too often found in the real world, and which a logician would be very much aware of.
“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”
If Alice could visit the world of liberal rhetoric and assumptions today, she might find similarly illogical and bizarre thinking. But people suffering in the current economy might not find it nearly as entertaining as "Alice in Wonderland."
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the world envisioned by today’s liberals is that it is a world where other people just passively accept whatever "change" liberals impose. In the world of Liberal Land, you can just take for granted all the benefits of the existing society, and then simply tack on your new, wonderful ideas that will make things better.
“I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is – ‘Be what you would seem to be’ – or if you’d like it put more simply – Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”
“I think I should understand that better,” Alice said very politely, “if I had it written down: but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.”
For example, if the economy is going along well and you happen to take a notion that there ought to be more home ownership, especially among the poor and minorities, then you simply have the government decree that lenders have to lend to more low-income people and minorities who want mortgages, ending finicky mortgage standards about down payments, income and credit histories.
“Another sandwich!” said the King.
“There’s nothing but hay left now,” the Messenger said, peeping into the bag.
“Hay, then,” the King murmured in a faint whisper.
Alice was glad to see that it revived him a good deal. “There’s nothing like eating hay when you’re faint,” he remarked to her, as he munched away.
“I should think throwing cold water over you would be better,” Alice suggested: “or some sal-volatile.”
“I didn’t say there was nothing BETTER,” the King replied. “I said there was nothing LIKE it.” Which Alice did not venture to deny.
That sounds like a fine idea in the world of Liberal Land. Unfortunately, in the ugly world of reality, it turned out to be a financial disaster, from which the economy has still not yet recovered. Nor have the poor and minorities.
Apparently you cannot just tack on your pet notions to whatever already exists, without repercussions spreading throughout the whole economy. That’s what happens in the ugly world of reality, as distinguished from the beautiful world of Liberal Land.
The strange and bizarre characters found in "Alice in Wonderland" have counterparts in the political vision of Liberal Land today. Among the most interesting of these characters are those elites who are convinced that they are so much smarter than the rest of us that they feel both a right and a duty to take all sorts of decisions out of our incompetent hands — for our own good.
“I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.
“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at this distance, too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!”
In San Francisco, which is Liberal Land personified, there have been attempts to ban the circumcision of newborn baby boys. Fortunately, that was nipped in the bud. But it shows how widely the self-anointed saviors of Liberal Land feel entitled to take decisions out of the hands of mere ordinary citizens.
Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner says, "We’re facing a very consequential debate about some fundamental choices as a country." People talk that way in Liberal Land. Moreover, such statements pass muster with those who simply take in the words, decide whether they sound nice to them, and then move on.
But, if you take words seriously, the more fundamental question is whether individuals are to remain free to make their own choices, as distinguished from having collectivized choices, "as a country" — which is to say, having choices made by government officials and imposed on the rest of us.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master– that’s all.”
The history of the 20th century is a painful lesson on what happens when collective choices replace individual choices. Even leaving aside the chilling history of totalitarianism in the 20th century, the history of economic central planning shows it to have been such a widely recognized disaster that even communist and socialist governments were abandoning it as the century ended.
Making choices "as a country" cannot be avoided in some cases, such as elections or referenda. But that is very different from saying that decisions in general should be made "as a country" — which boils down to having people like Timothy Geithner taking more and more decisions out of our own hands and imposing their will on the rest of us. That way lies madness exceeding anything done by the Mad Hatter in "Alice in Wonderland."
That way lie unfunded mandates, nanny state interventions in people’s lives, such as banning circumcision — and the ultimate nanny state monstrosity, ObamaCare.
The world of reality has its problems, so it is understandable that some people want to escape to a different world, where you can talk lofty talk and forget about ugly realities like costs and repercussions. The world of reality is not nearly as lovely as the world of Liberal Land. No wonder so many people want to go there.
The following is an outstanding find for instruction in analyzing the left and liberals. I will comment further below in [italics] and add a few italicized emphases in the original text (regular bold is in the original).
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John Hawkins is a professional blogger who runs Right Wing News, Linkiest, Viral Footage, & Trending Right. You can read more from John Hawkins on Facebook, Twitter, G+, You Tube, and at Raising Red.
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. — Charles Krauthammer
Even liberals who’ve accomplished a lot in their lives and have high IQs often say things on a regular basis that are stunningly, profoundly stupid and at odds with the way the world works. Modern liberalism has become so bereft of common sense and instinctually suicidal that America can only survive over the long haul by thwarting the liberal agenda. In fact, liberalism has become such a toxic and poisonous philosophy that most liberals wouldn’t behave differently if their goal were to deliberately destroy the country. So, how does liberalism cause well-meaning, intelligent liberals to get this way? Well, it starts with…
1) Liberalism creates a feedback loop. It is usually impossible for a non-liberal to change a liberal’s mind about political issues because liberalism works like so: only liberals are credible sources of information. How do you know someone’s liberal? He espouses liberal doctrine. So, no matter how plausible what you say may be, it will be ignored if you’re not a liberal and if you are a liberal, of course, you probably agree with liberal views. This sort of close-mindedness makes liberals nearly impervious to any information that might undermine their beliefs.
[Philosophically, we are talking about the Asylum of Ignorance here. For those new to this blog, the Asylum of Ignorance is what one creates in the mind to avoid confronting truth with which you disagree. Your mind is made up and you don’t want to be confused by the facts. For example, you will hold as true the assertion that Joe will come to the meeting wearing a red tie and will not consider it refuted if he comes wearing a green tie or no tie whatsoever. I say “philosophically” because in philosophy, this is how you become meaningless. When you hold to the truth of your position regardless of any data to the contrary, your position is meaningless.]
2) Liberals sources of information are ever present. Conservatives are regularly exposed to the liberal viewpoint whether they want to be or not. That’s not necessarily so for liberals. Imagine the average day for liberals. They get up and read their local newspaper. It has a liberal viewpoint. They take their kids to school, where the teachers are liberal. Then they go to work, listen to NPR which has a liberal viewpoint on the way home, and then turn on the nightly news which also skews leftward. From there, they turn on TV and watch shows created by liberals that lean to the left, if they have any political viewpoint at all. Unless liberals actively seek out conservative viewpoints, which is unlikely, the only conservative arguments they’re probably going to hear are going to be through the heavily distorted, poorly translated, deeply skeptical lens of other liberals.
[This is particularly true in Washington, D.C. And the MSM it a main component of the problem.]
3) Liberals emphasize feeling superior, not superior results. Liberalism is all about appearances, not outcomes. What matters to liberals is how a program makes them FEEL about themselves, not whether it works or not. Thus a program like Headstart, which sounds good because it’s designed to help children read, makes liberals feel good about themselves, even though the program doesn’t work and wastes billions. A ban on DDT makes liberals feel good about themselves because they’re "protecting the environment" even though millions of people have died as a result. For liberals, it’s not what a program does in the real world; it’s about whether they feel better about themselves for supporting it.
[For an analysis of how we’ve gotten in this position, check out my series on Postman’s watershed work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. First post here, final post here. There are many in between.]
4) Liberals are big believers in moral relativism. This spins them round and round because if the only thing that’s wrong is saying that there’s an absolute moral code, then you lose your ability to tell cause from effect, good from bad, and right from wrong. Taking being non-judgmental to the level that liberals do leaves them paralyzed, pondering "why they hate us" because they feel incapable of saying, “That’s wrong," and doing something about it. If you’re against firm standards and condemning immoral behavior, then your moral compass won’t work and you’ll also be for immorality, as well as societal and cultural decay by default.
[And thus we have the moral dissonance of being for the murder of babies, aka, abortion and against the execution of known murderers, aka, capital punishment!]
5) Liberals tend to view people as parts of groups, not individuals. One of the prejudices of liberalism is that they see everyone as part of a group, not as an individual. This can lead to rather bizarre disparities when say, a man from a group that they consider to be powerless, impoverished victims becomes the leader of the free world — and he’s challenged by a group of lower middle class white people who’ve banded together because individually they’re powerless. If you listen to the liberal rhetoric, you might think Barack Obama was a black Republican being surrounded by a KKK lynching party 100 years ago — as opposed to the single most powerful man in America abusing the authority of his office to attack ordinary Tea Partiers who have the audacity to speak the truth to power for the good of their country.
[Interestingly, Christianity alone views people as individuals with both corporate responsibilities as well as individual rights and responsibilities in balance. A related concept is that of “jurisdiction,” that is areas of responsibility some of which fall to individuals and some to collectives. Because biblical revelation is generally rejected and consequently biblical ignorance runs rampant, this balance is rarely achieved these days. The other advantage of thinking in terms of groups is it takes your eyes off of personal responsibility…see next point.]
6) Liberals take a dim view of personal responsibility. Who’s at fault if a criminal commits a crime? The criminal or society? If someone creates a business and becomes a millionaire, is that the result of hard work and talent or luck? If you’re dirt poor, starving, and haven’t worked in 5 years, is that a personal failing or a failure of the state? Conservatives would tend to say the former in each case, while liberals would tend to say the latter. But when you disconnect what an individual does from the results that happen in his life, it’s very difficult to understand cause and effect in people’s lives.
[And the God very specifically says throughout the Bible and in a multiplicity of ways, you shall reap what you sow.]
7) Liberals give themselves far too much credit just for being liberal. To many liberals, all one needs to do to be wise, intelligent, compassionate, open minded, and sensitive is to BE LIBERAL. In other words, many of the good things about a person spring not from his actions, but from the ideology he holds. This has an obvious appeal. You can be a diehard misogynist, but plausibly call yourself a feminist, hate blacks, but accuse others of racism, have a subpar IQ and be an intellectual, give nothing to charity and be compassionate, etc., etc., and all you have to do is call yourself a liberal. It’s a shortcut to virtue much like the corrupt old idea of religious indulgences. Why live a life of virtue when you could live a sinful life and buy your way into heaven? If you’re a liberal, why actually live a life of virtue when you can merely call yourself a liberal and get credit for being virtuous, even when you’ve done nothing to earn it?
Courtesy of blogger Ann Barnhardt:
DEATH THREAT:
To:annbarnhardt
I’m going to kill you when I find you. Don’t think I won’t, I know where you and your parents live and I’ll need is one phone-call to kil ya’ll.
———————————————-
ANN’S RESPONSE:
Re: Watch your back.
Hello mufcadnan123!
You don’t need to "find" me. My address is 9175 Kornbrust Circle, Lone Tree, CO 80124.
Luckily for you, there are daily DIRECT FLIGHTS from Heathrow to Denver. Here’s what you will need to do. After arriving at Denver and passing through customs, you will need to catch the shuttle to the rental car facility. Once in your rental car, take Pena Boulevard to I-225 south. Proceed on I-225 south to I-25 south. Proceed south on I-25 to Lincoln Avenue which is exit 193. Turn right (west) onto Lincoln. Proceed west to the fourth light, and turn left (south) onto Ridgegate Boulevard. Proceed south, through the roundabout to Kornbrust Drive. Turn left onto Kornbrust Drive and then take an immediate right onto Kornbrust Circle. I’m at 9175.
Just do me one favor. PLEASE wear body armor. I have some new ammunition that I want to try out, and frankly, close-quarter body shots without armor would feel almost unsporting from my perspective. That and the fact that I’m probably carrying a good 50 I.Q. points on you makes it morally incumbent upon me to spot you a tactical advantage.
However, being that you are a miserable, trembling coward, I realize that you probably are incapable of actually following up on any of your threats without losing control of your bowels and crapping your pants while simultaneously sobbing yourself into hyperventilation. So, how about this: why don’t you contact the main mosque here in Denver and see if some of the local musloids here in town would be willing to carry out your attack for you? After all, this is what your "perfect man" mohamed did (pig excrement be upon him). You see, mohamed, being a miserable coward and a con artist, would send other men into battle to fight on his behalf. Mohamed would stay at the BACK of the pack and let the stupid, ignorant suckers like you that he had conned into his political cult do the actual fighting and dying. Mohamed would then fornicate with the dead men’s wives and children. You should follow mohamed’s example! Here is the contact info for the main mosque here in Denver:
Masjid Abu Bakr
Imam Karim Abu Zaid
2071 South Parker Road
Denver, CO 80231
Phone: 303-696-9800
Email: denvermosque@yahoo.com
I’m sure they would be delighted to hear from you. Frankly, I’m terribly disappointed that not a SINGLE musloid here in the United States has made ANY attempt to rape and behead me. But maybe I haven’t made myself clear enough, so let me do that right now.
I will NEVER, EVER, EVER submit to islam. I will fight islam with every fiber of my being for as long as I live because islam is pure satanic evil. If you are really serious about islam dominating the United States and the world, you are going to have to come through me. You are going to have to kill me. Good luck with that. And understand that if you or some of your musloid boyfriends do actually manage to kill me, The Final Crusade will officially commence five minutes later, and then, despite your genetic mental retardation, you will be made to understand with crystal clarity what the word "defeat" means. Either way, I win, so come and get it.
Deo adjuvante non timendum-
Ann Barnhardt
There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind — what they are in their thought-world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo’s chisel, and it is true of a dictatorís sword.
Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, Ch. 1
Over the recent holidays, our family watched multiple videos for entertainment and relaxation. Alas, these days such activities still require that some low level mental shields be maintained to prevent the penetration of false ideas into one’s thinking, and especially into that of your children if you are a parent. Commenting on objectionable things (like vulgar language) as they happen is one way to counter such problems (as well as staying away from R rated films and worse), but “debriefing” your children with probing questions about what they watched can also help them learn to view with discernment, to think and compare, to develop values for their life. In short, to help inoculate them against liberalism.
Two fairly recent releases seen in a close temporal juxtaposition provided an interesting contrast in worldviews for me that serve as the meat of this post. I’m not sure I would have picked up on it had we not seen them so close together, and the reviewers in the links below certainly missed what I saw (they do have some useful observations as well). Yet, as Francis Schaeffer points out, one’s worldview will come out in what one creates regardless of the venue.
Both videos were animations, and in both cases the protagonist must find within himself a level of courage he previously did not know he had in a battle against evil that threatens not just himself but all that he loves. I still highly recommend both as good family fun, with the caveat that “debriefing” be executed post viewing. Now, where’s the popcorn!
The first film is Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole 
and it is stunning eye-candy in its photorealistic animation. The aerial battle scenes are particularly effective in their use of slow motion at critical junctures. And the plot in general (I’m trying not to spoil it for those who haven’t seen it) avoids excess violence and gore, yet is imaginative and holds your attention. Although there is some humor, this one tends to be a more serious adventure in tone and the evil is depicted in a way that earns it a PG13 rating rather than just PG.
So, what of the worldview in this one? Think Star Wars. The parallels are multiple. First, there are the two sides, the Pure Ones (Sith) and the Guardians (Jedi). Our hero, Soren, and his friends (there are four of them and I’ll let you figure out which one is Chewbacca, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and the droids!) find themselves under the tutelage of a small screech owl who turns out to be a great military hero and chronicler of the last major war, an almost mythical warrior of the first class who is lionized in the tales parent owls pass on to their children. Think “Yoda” here, both in size and status. Indeed, the scene where it is revealed to our young protagonist that this little owl is the great warrior (!?!) is highly reminiscent of Luke Skywalker’s reaction to discovering who Yoda really is.
The major lesson this feathered Yoda teaches is where we find the problem, for although there is no ubiquitous “Force” being promulgated, there is something actually more insidious because it is something attainable in the real world…indeed, highly evident in today’s world. It is the principle of “following your gizzard and not your mind”…to feel your way through flight rather than to think about what you are doing. To think is to err. There is even a “use the Force, Luke, use the Force” moment during the climactic final battle between the Guardians and the Pure Ones in which Soren, much like young Skywalker, must navigate a treacherous course to accomplish his goal of aiding the Guardians in that battle. And of course, like Luke, he does so successfully “flying by his gizzard.”
This is the liberal worldview: one in which it is more important to respond by how you feel than to the actual facts of the case, one in which facts and data are anathema if they make you uncomfortable or disagree with your a priori desires and conceptions of what should be, one in which how your actions make you feel is the final criterion for determining right from wrong.
Unfortunately, facts are stubborn things that do not depend on or care about how you feel. There is another adjective for you that more accurately describes this worldview: narcissistic!
The contrasting video is How To Train Your Dragon. The animation is not what I would call photorealistic, but it is still top-notch, with flight sequences that leave you breathless. And this one has much more humor to it, particularly in the wry humor of the narrative provided by the protagonist.
In this story, our hero is a boy with the unlikely name of Hiccup, a young Viking who doesn’t fit in because, essentially, he does think about things…too much so in the eyes of his family and peers. He is basically a Viking geek. But…he begins to enjoy some success when he focuses his interest on the dragon his invention brings down unbeknownst to anyone else(again, I’m trying not to reveal too much plot so you can watch this with enjoyment). That interest is focused in a unique way, however. While everyone else is consumed by ways to kill dragons, Hiccup learns by observation about dragons, which in turn helps him overcome dragon opponents in the training arena without killing them. He uses a combination of observation, logic (basically the scientific method), and creativity to discern what causes dragon behavior and uses that knowledge to overcome multiple obstacles. He is rewarded with a friendship with this dragon that eventually culminates in the two of them synergistically conquering an evil greater that all the other dragons combined, as well as the prejudice of his family and peers.
In other words, the worldview espoused by this video is that of thinking and doing regardless of how you feel, of overcoming with facts and data. As mentioned, courage and creativity are still necessary elements, but they are grounded in reality. This is the Christian worldview that has fueled all of western civilization for centuries.
Again, this high level analysis of the two distinct worldviews in these videos is not to say that they shouldn’t be watched, or that there are not other elements in each that are objectionable or commendable. Just be aware that there is more to these films than may initially meet the eye. Neither are like Avatar that wore its liberalism so loudly and proudly that all reviewers with functioning synapses noted the incredibly strong liberal bias of the worldview in that one. But even Avatar was/is still a rollicking good adventure with phenomenal CGI effects, as long as you remember that it is only fiction!
And that is part of the key to watching any video. Remember that it is only entertainment and not education regardless of how serious the filmmaker may want you to take their work. And remember to use it to create your own learning moment to teach the lessons of life that will allow your children/pupils to function in the real world.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get a refill of my popcorn.
Observe the setup in this story:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Now when he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ So they went. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right you will receive.’
(Matthew 20:1-7)
Note that only the first group of laborers had a contract with the landowner, a specific amount for wages for the day’s work. Moreover, a denarius was the going rate for a day’s labor, so the landowner was not being unfair in the amount he had negotiated with these workers (i.e., despite what your college professor says, he was not exploiting these men). All the rest were simply told they would receive what was “right.”
“So when evening had come, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last to the first.’ And when those came who were hired about the eleventh hour, they each received a denarius. But when the first came, they supposed that they would receive more; and they likewise received each a denarius.
(Matthew 20:8-10)
The plot thickens as the landowner then pays everyone equally, although not all gave an equal amount of work. The primary point, though, is that those who had an agreement with the landowner received exactly what they agreed to. No more and no less. Now if you’ve been edjamacated in our current public school system or are a recent graduate of one of our finer institutions of “higher” edjamacation, you most likely feel this is unfair. How dare that landowner exploit those poor workers by treating them all the same?!? (Wait, isn’t that the liberal idea? Equal outcome despite unequal input? Now I am confused!) And that was, indeed, the reaction of the first group (they must have been way ahead of their time, as all progressives are!):
And when they had received it, they complained against the landowner, saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’
(Matthew 20:11-12)
So what is wrong here? The only one’s with a “contract” got exactly that to which they agreed. Their contract was fulfilled per law. They were not cheated, but got exactly that for which they’d negotiated. Those who’d worked less got more than they probably expected, but still, they had done some work. Shouldn’t this have been a classic example of how liberal economics works…those who work hard support those who don’t? Aren’t all workers entitled to a full day’s wages even if they didn’t actually work the full day? Yes, this is exactly what so much of the current administration’s policies, and liberal education’s philosophy, reduce to: those who work hard and thus earn more money must give more and more of that money to those who don’t. Euphemistically, this is call “redistribution.” It is symptomatic of big government socialism. It is also more accurately known as, “Grand Theft.”
Jesus closes with this kicker that should knock down this false philosophy:
But he answered one of them and said, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?‘
(Matthew 20:13-15)
The right to private property and the right to dispense it as one sees fit is here unabashedly stated point blank. This includes the right to be charitable without being labeled as “unfair.” And to challenge this right is categorized as “evil.” Why? Simply put:
“You shall not steal.
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”
(Exodus 20:15, 17)
The eighth and tenth commandments are broken by this philosophy. Or said another way, no one is entitled to an entitlement. Why not? Because “Government,” the alleged source of such largesse, is actually not the real source; it does not create the funds it is dispensing. It has to acquire them through things like taxation, um, excuse me, redistribution of wealth. True workers must work not for themselves, but for others. The dust bin of history has shown that to depend upon such altruism consistently is foolishly suicidal. It depends upon a false view of man and so is doomed to failure (more on this in an upcoming post currently in the works).
For those interested in reading some more, try Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Although she does not write from a Christian worldview, her analysis of economics corresponds to reality to a significantly higher degree than any socialistic model. Earlier this year Thomas Sowell wrote about this, and you can read my summary and comments on his analysis here.
The bottomline: it is a dangerous departure from reality to depend upon the subjective idea of “fairness” when trying to discern right and wrong. Objective metrics are necessary. This is how the world truly works. If you don’t believe me, try defying the “fairness” of the law of gravity. Go ahead, I dare you! After all, how unfair is it that birds can fly and you cannot!
As a general rule, our family never goes to the movie theatre. IF there be something worth watching, we exercise self-control and wait for the movies we want to see to come out in the video stores and thus watch them for far less and in the comfort of our home…complete with cheap popcorn that doesn’t taste like styrofoam and dog nestled comfortably in one’s lap and the ability to run to get more popcorn without missing anything thanks to that wonder of modern technology, the “Pause” button. This also allows us to critically review whether or not we want to view “the latest and greatest.” Thus, we have not yet viewed the latest and greatest Avatar. Yes, I know it is a thinly veiled liberal leftist tree-hugging propagandistic work of total fiction, but it also apparently has some CGI effects that are quite state of the art and very “cool,” if I may use that term. Out of curiosity regarding the play time, I Googled “Avatar movie” to find out how much time viewing this fiction would waste. The first link Google uncovered had the answer (2 hours 40 minutes) in the summary so I didn’t even have to open the link. I was stunned, however, by a link half way down the page. There I read:
Depressed and suicidal!?!?? It’s just a freakin’ movie!
The essence of “entertainment” is escapism, and engaging in “healthy” escapism includes self-control over the transition between reality and fiction, fact and fantasy. It is the essence of sanity to know both where the boundary between fact and fantasy lies and where you are relative to that boundary, and to maintain volitional control over the travel across that boundary. The people in the above link obviously are having problems with the location of that boundary and in their transfer back and forth from one side to the other.
Why might this be of any importance? Well, first, as noted above and elsewhere, we all know that the most likely person to become so enamored of this movie will be a liberal enviro-wacko tree hugger. (Note to such: no, conservatives are not out to rape, plunder, and pillage “Mother Nature” for fun and profit despite what you saw in Avatar, and despite what your college professor told you sans evidence. We do believe in using God’s creation for mankind’s benefit, but that must be done responsibly and with the term “stewardship” in mind as an accurate description of our efforts.) So most likely the kind of induhvidual who will engage in this dance with insanity is a liberal of some sort. (Yes, Piker, I am generalizing and yes, you may find exceptions on both sides; this is a probabilistic generalization.)
The irony here is that every so often liberals feel the necessity of dredging up some kind of study that allegedly proves that they and not conservatives are really so much better at dealing with reality than are those knuckle-dragging Neanderthal conservatives. I debunked one such effort here awhile ago. Given this liberal insecurity revealed in their need to constantly affirm their superiority, why is it that when confronted with reality, they become “depressed and suicidal?” Who is really the better adapted to dealing with the world in which we live?
Get a grip, people!
I have listed one Dr. Sanity over on my blogroll as a “Prodigious Anti-Idiotarian” and a recent post of hers supplies ample justification of applying this appellation to her. Rather than trying to reword her eloquence, I am reproducing her post below. In it, she supplies the connection between the entitlement mentality running rampant through our society to the psychobabble concept of self-esteem. In the process, she not only defines these terms with a clarity that is refreshing, but provides the appropriate contrast to the valid concept of self-respect. For those interested in reading more, follow this link to the original post for both her blog and the links in this post. Given the behavior of the liberal side of the spectrum, including many in the current administration, this analysis is particularly timely. The first step in curing any disease is accurate diagnosis. (Italics emphases are in the original; bold emphases are added.)
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ENCOURAGING A CULTURE OF NARCISSISM, Or, The Emperors’ New Egos
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Here is a great essay by Dr. Theodore Dalrymple on the difference between self-esteem and self-respect:
Self-esteem is, of course, a term in the modern lexicon of psychobabble, and psychobabble is itself the verbal expression of self-absorption without self-examination. The former is a pleasurable vice, the latter a painful discipline. An accomplished psychobabbler can talk for hours about himself without revealing anything.
Insofar as self-esteem has a meaning, it is the appreciation of one’s own worth and importance. That it is a concept of some cultural resonance is demonstrated by the fact that an Internet search I conducted brought up 14,500,000 sites, only slightly fewer than the U.S. Constitution and four times as many as “fortitude.”
When people speak of their low self-esteem, they imply two things: first, that it is a physiological fact, rather like low hemoglobin, and second, that they have a right to more of it. What they seek, if you like, is a transfusion of self-esteem, given (curiously enough) by others; and once they have it, the quality of their lives will improve as the night succeeds the day. For the record, I never had a patient who complained of having too much self-esteem, and who therefore asked for a reduction. Self-esteem, it appears, is like money or health: you can’t have too much of it.
Self-esteemists, if I may so call those who are concerned with the levels of their own self-esteem, believe that it is something to which they have a right. If they don’t have self-esteem in sufficient quantity to bring about a perfectly happy life, their fundamental rights are being violated. They feel aggrieved and let down by others rather than by themselves; they ascribe their lack of rightful self-esteem to the carping, and unjustified, criticism of parents, teachers, spouses, and colleagues….
Self-respect is another quality entirely. Where self-esteem is entirely egotistical, requiring that the world should pay court to oneself whatever oneself happens to be like or do, and demands nothing of the person who wants it, self-respect is a social virtue, a discipline, that requires an awareness of and sensitivity to the feelings of others. It requires an ability and willingness to put oneself in someone else’s place; it requires dignity and fortitude, and not always taking the line of least resistance.
You might have noticed in recent years that the overwhelming emphasis in our narcissistic culture has been to emphasize self-esteem at the expense of self-respect and personal responsibility.
For years now, pop psychology and its gurus have mesmerized the culture at large. All their self-help tenets have percolated through K-12 educational curricula; and been accepted wholeheartedly by the cultural elite of Hollywood and the intellectual elite of academia.
The triumvarate of contradictions that claims to be based on “scientific” psychology includes the hyping of (1) self-esteem (increasing your self-worth without having to achieve anything); (2) hope (achieving your goals without any real effort) and (3) victimhood (it’s not your fault that you haven’t achieved anything or made any effort).
These three fundamental axioms of leftist thought have risen to prominence in our society even as concepts such as self-respect and personal responsibility have been mocked and denigrated.
Indeed, the very use of words like “personal responsibility”, for example, have become politically incorrect–racist, even–primarily because personal responsibility is not compatible with the three fundamental leftist axioms noted above.
After several decades, the intellectual impoverishment brought about by faux self-esteem, fairy-tale utopian fantasies, and eternal victimhood–all pseudoscientific psychological deceptions designed to maintain dependence on leftist ideology– are now becoming apparent:
Over a 20-year span beginning in the early 1970s, the average SAT score fell by 35 points. But in that same period, the contingent of college-bound seniors who boasted an A or B average jumped from 28% to an astonishing 83%, as teachers felt increasing pressure to adopt more “supportive” grading policies. Tellingly, in a 1989 study of comparative math skills among students in eight nations, Americans ranked lowest in overall competence, Koreans highest — but when researchers asked the students how good they thought they were at math, the results were exactly opposite: Americans highest, Koreans lowest. Meanwhile, data from 1999′s omnibus Third International Mathematics and Science Study, ranking 12th-graders from 23 nations, put U.S. students in 20th place, besting only South Africa, Lithuania and Cyprus.
Still, the U.S. keeps dressing its young in their emperors’ new egos, passing them on to the next set of empowering curricula. If you teach at the college level, as I do, at some point you will be confronted with a student seeking redress over the grade you gave him because “I’m premed!” Not until such students reach med school do they encounter truly inelastic standards: a comeuppance for them but a reprieve for those who otherwise might find ourselves anesthetized beneath their second-rate scalpel.
The larger point is that society has embraced such concepts as self-esteem and confidence despite scant evidence that they facilitate positive outcomes. The work of psychologists Roy Baumeister and Martin Seligman suggests that often, high self-worth is actually a marker for negative behavior, as found in sociopaths and drug kingpins.
We see the people who have inhaled this “psychology-lite” everywhere around us, and in all levels of society. Particularly we can notice it in the elites of Hollywood and Academia; who alternate between acting out their narcissistically empowered superiority — demanding to be noticed, admired and loved (by you); and playing the narcissistically empowered victim — demanding their inalienable rights and privileges (at your expense).
But the real victims of all this hype are our children, because these foolish notions, without a scintilla of scientific evidence (but they make some people feel very very good about themselves) have become the pop psychology dogma of public policy in education.
And, the corollary of their implementation has been an equal and opposite de-emphasis on taking personal responsibility for one’s actions and behaviors and accepting the consequences, both good and bad. As a result, self-respect, which must be earned remains elusive; but self-esteem is everywhere–every two-bit thug and bureaucrat has an excess of it. But, as Dalrymple notes, it is never enough.
Since a person’s character is not only determined by successes in life, but by how failures are dealt with; healthy self-esteem is the by-product of negotiating those successes and failures with integrity and honesty. By doing so, one gains the much more important quality of self-respect.
“Hope” is meaningless unless it escapes the land of fantasy and conforms with reality; and “victimhood” should only be a transient state that motivates a person to change behavior–not a celebration or a way of life.
For many on the left side of the political spectrum, the concept of “personal responsibility” is inextricably linked to conservative moral principles; to business success and capitalism; and–the bugaboo of collectivists everywhere– individualism. It is no secret that the political left has idealized certain social and political systems because they suppressed the individual and elevated the state, insisting that individuals have no right to exist for their own selves, but only to serve others.
Those on the left mistakenly believe that it is individualism and “evil” capitalism that is linked to narcissistic behavior. But as I have explained in previous posts, there is a flip side to “selfish” or “grandiose” narcissism and that is narcissism rooted in idealism, rather than selfishness; or “idealistic” narcissism (discussed at some length here if you are interested). This second kind of narcissism (the flip side of the coin, if you will) is less obvious to an observer, since it is disguised with a veneer of concern for others. But it is equally—if not more— destructive and causative of human suffering, decay, death and misery. Both kinds of narcissism are a plague on the world; and both are well-traveled avenues for limiting freedom and imposing tyranny. The “grandiose” narcissism is the stimulus for individual tyrants, while the “idealistic” narcissism leads to groups imposing their will on others.
The idealistic narcissist is invested in utopian fantasies. Their self-esteem is derived from the power they feel in controlling the lives of others, and they desperately need to maintain a constant supply of “victims” they can pretend to champion. In general, they are extremely resistant to taking responsibility for their own behavior or the implementation of their utopian dreams–all of which have been emotionally catastrophic for the individuals in the system. Is it any wonder that the political left identifies personal responsibility as a dangerous and radical concept? In a world where personal responsibility and accountability for one’s behavior is expected, they themselves would have to answer to that thing we call “reality.”
This they cannot and will not do. That is how little self-respect they have to go along with their inflated sense of self-esteem.
Thus, they have constructed a whole system (“political correctness”) to stigmatize and intimidate those who believe that self-esteem must be earned by achievement and is dependent on one’s choices and actions; that “hope and change” come about not by wishing and lovely rhetoric, but by doing; and that your current bad situation may not be (entirely) your own fault, but by constantly externalizing blame for that situation, you miss opportunities to make necessary changes in your own behavior that keep you down. By taking responsibility for your own life, you stop waiting to be rescued and do what you have to do to rescue yourself. You can stay a “victim” and wallow in “victimhood”, but the essence of maturity and adulthood is taking charge of your own life and not letting others dictate who you should be, or what you should do.
Unhealthy narcissism (yes, a certain amount of narcissism not only can be healthy, it is essential to function optimally in life) is encouraged by the “self-esteem gurus” in education, whose nonsense continues to reinforce the inappropriate grandiosity of young children by facilitating a faux self-esteem; just as the radical environmentalists and politically correct, kumbayah types (among other groups) continue to reinforce the malignant selflessness that comes from fervently believing in the perfectibility of human beings.
Between the two influences unleashed on the vulnerable minds of our children, is it any surprise that by the time they get to college, kids are either dysfunctional, self-absorbed narcissists; naively malignant do-gooders; or (at best) completely and irrevocably cynical about the pervasive indoctrination and anti-intellectualism they have been subjected to in their educational careers?
Dalrymple correctly notes that, “Self-respect requires fortitude, one of the cardinal virtues; self-esteem encourages emotional incontinence that, while not actually itself a cardinal sin is certainly a vice and a very unattractive one Self-respect and self-esteem are as different as depth and shallowness.”
Or as different as achieving maturity versus remaining childish.
Part and parcel in today’s multicultural society is a stunning confusion when it comes to matters of defending oneself and one’s loved ones from harm. I have already written at some length on this subject here and from the biblical perspective here. A recent column by Mike Adams gives us one such despicable example in the form of a father who “would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime.” Those are his words, verbatim, and you will note he’d rather his own child die, not himself, than to use a gun in self-defense. I agree with Dr. Adams when he says,
Morally speaking, I have no problem with anti-gun ideologues who wish to place themselves in peril by waiving their rights of self-defense. You almost have to respect someone who is willing to die for his beliefs.
But it is nothing but craven cowardice in my book to decide that others should die for his beliefs. And speaking as a father, to be willing to sacrifice your own children on the altar of your ideology goes beyond the pale. Dr. Adams identifies the underlying root cause in the liberal’s rationale. The logic is simple (emphasis added):
It all goes back to ideology. Liberals refuse to believe in deterrence theory because to do so admits to the fallen nature of man. To them, man is inherently good, not evil. Moreover, he is perfectible. The liberal is willing to die to preserve his vision of himself and others. And he wants you to die for his vision, too.
So rejection of God and His revelation in the Bible creates this disconnect from reality in the liberal’s life. This theology dictates his morality and if the theology is in error, the morality goes along for the ride. (Oddly enough, such induhviduals usually also believe in the theory of evolution in which the survival of the fittest reigns supreme. That “fitness” minimally requires the ability to kill in self-defense and frequently in offense. Thus, were they consistent with their ideology, they would ensure their own extinction! But I digress.)
In his attempts to perfect humanity, the liberal proponent of gun control ignores in typical liberal form all data that runs counter to his position. Dr. Adams notes (emphases added):
Fortunately, we know the answer when it comes to concealed carry laws. Sixteen peer-reviewed studies show that allowing citizens to lawfully carry reduces violent crime rates. Ten peer-reviewed studies are inconclusive. But there are, to date, no peer-reviewed studies reaching the opposite conclusion; namely that allowing citizens to lawfully carry increases violent crime rates.
The feckless multiculturalist who holds this position regarding personal self-defense will usually hold the same in the area of national defense. Thus, in recent conflicts, their position stands as a very sharp contrast to the attitudes and actions of our military and, in multitudes of instances, the Iraqi people who have experienced tyranny and terror for decades. Read any of the Milblogs over on my blogroll for any length of time, particularly those reporting from embeds with the military such as Michael Yon, and you will understand how a significant portion of Iraqi population just want to live their lives like you and me. Given the obstacles they face, they have difficult choices to make of which we are all to often experientially ignorant. David Bellavia has posted recently a must-read article about our victory in Iraq and what it means for the men and women who made it possible, and for the men and women of Iraq (HT: BlackFive). Mr. Bellavia observes:
What we achieved in the face of an implacable enemy, overcoming many in our own government willfully ignorant of our struggle, is what I believe to be the defining moment of my generation. The veteran today is the embodiment of what it means to be an American. Even when our valor was used for political sport, we continued to serve quietly.
This is truly without precedent.
One particularly riveting excerpt:
The bullets are flying.
My squad runs through the searing heat and forms a wall of flesh and Kevlar between the incoming fire and the citizens standing in line behind us. They’ve turned out in their finest clothes to wait for the opportunity to cast a vote. For most, this moment is a defining one in their lives. They’ve never had a voice before. This means something to them, and they have used the moment as an object lesson for their children. They appear nervous and take photos. The kids stand with them in line, viewing first hand this revolution in Iraqi civics.
As they came to line up earlier that morning, the men thanked us and clasped their hands over their heads, striking a triumphant pose. Some of the women cried. The kids were on their best behavior.
The gunfire began that afternoon. Insurgents started to shoot them. My unit ran to the road and formed a protective position between the killers and the citizens going to the polls. As we scanned the palm grove in front of us, bullets cracked and whined, then mortars start thumping around us. My squad pushed into the palm grove. I stayed on the road, overseeing their movement and coordinating the heavy fire from the Bradleys.
The firefight ebbs. The mortar fire ceases. A few last stray rounds streak past. A cry from behind causes me to turn. Lying in the road is a young Iraqi woman. I run over to help. She’s caught a round just below her temple. Her stunning beauty has been ruined forever.
She cries, “Paper! Paper” over and over until the ambulance arrives to take her away. An old lady emerges from the schoolhouse-turned voting site, sheets of blue paper in hand. She gives one to the wounded girl, who clutches it to her like a prized possession even as the ambulance carries her away.
The ballot was her voice. All she wanted was a chance to exercise it, just once, before she died.
Do you think that woman thought there was something beyond herself worth dying for? Mr. Bellavia notes:
That young woman wanted nothing else than the chance to explore her newfound freedom. She didn’t beg for help, or plead for her life. Voting would become her final act. In that moment, she matched our own sacrifices.
Something worth dying for. Which brings us back to our deluded liberal multiculturalist. Shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings, Mark Steyn wrote (emphases added):
The ‘gun-free zone’ fraud isn’t just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia’s distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with ‘the erosion of intellectual self-defense,’ and the retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech codes and ‘safe spaces’ that’s the very opposite of the principles of honest enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we ‘fear guns,’ and ‘verbal violence,’ and excessively realistic swashbuckling in the varsity production of ‘The Three Musketeers.’ What kind of functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?
My conclusion then is the same and I would say this to the above alleged father:
The reality with which such a cocoon is refusing to engage is the reality of Evil in the world, and I mean that with the capital "E." As we have had repeatedly demonstrated for us, there are those who would go so far as to kill you if you stand in the way of their goals, and indeed, there are those that will do so no matter how good and kind and pleasant and appeasing you are, just for the sheer pleasure of killing you. We may, and indeed, should, recoil in horror at the existence of such sentiments, and fortunately, such individuals are in the great minority. But to deny their existence is a denial of reality that is tantamount to suicide.
Pardon me if I decline to subscribe to such delusional self destruction.
To describe “fairness” as anything other than an ideal for which to strive would seem to be an exercise in opposing goodness, Mom, and apple pie. As is all too often the case, it all depends on your operational definition of “fairness.” In a recent four part series, Thomas Sowell gives us an excellent overview of how the definition currently in use results in a woeful wrenching of reality that all to often yields consequences the exact opposite of those espoused by its proponents.
Calling the concept in its liberal definition a fallacy, Dr. Sowell gives the central reason for this identification in his Part I (emphasis added):
If by "fair" you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.
Even within the same family, among children born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, the first-borns on average have higher IQs than their brothers and sisters, and usually achieve more in life.
Unfairness is often blamed on somebody, even if only on "society." But whose fault is it if you were not the first born? Since some groups have more children than others, a higher percentage of the next generation will be first-borns in groups that have smaller families, so such groups have an advantage over other groups.
When theory and reality do not coincide, the logical thing is to change the theory. That is not the liberal strategy. Pointing to what many on the left (and perhaps some on the right) refuse to acknowledge, Dr. Sowell continues (emphasis added):
Many people fail to see the fundamental difference between saying that a particular thing– whether a mental test or an institution– is conveying a difference that already exists or is creating a difference that would not exist otherwise.
Creating a difference that would not exist otherwise is discrimination, and something can be done about that. But, in recent times, virtually any disparity in outcomes is almost automatically blamed on discrimination, despite the incredible range of other reasons for disparities between individuals and groups.
Nature’s discrimination completely dwarfs man’s discrimination.
Differences exist and part of growing up involves learning to confront with courage, resolve, etc., the obstacles life throws at you. Using a specific example in the field of education in Part II, Dr. Sowell reveals with clarity (i.e., in an unpolitically correct way, i.e., bluntly telling the truth) underlying root distortions lurking in the liberal methods employed to try to solve the problem but which, in reality, only make the problem worse (emphases added):
The point is to close educational gaps among groups, or at least go on record as trying. As with most equalization crusades, whether in education or in the economy, it is about equalizing downward, by lowering those at the top. "Fairness" strikes again!
…
In the language of the politically correct, achievement is equated with privilege. Such verbal sleight of hand evades the question whether individuals’ own priorities and efforts affect outcomes, whether in education or in other endeavors. No need to look at empirical evidence when a clever phrase can take that whole question off the table.
…
But, to some on the left, the very concept of achievement must be banished by all means necessary, regardless of the facts.
Achievement by overcoming obstacles is a special threat to the left’s vision of the world, and so must be magically transformed into privilege through rhetoric.
Those with that vision do not want to even discuss evidence that students from different groups spend different amounts of time on homework and different amounts of time on social activities. To admit that inputs affect outputs, whether in education, in the economy or in other areas, would be to undermine the vision and agenda of the left, and deprive those who believe in that vision of a moral melodrama, starring themselves as defenders of the oppressed and crusaders against the forces of evil.
And there we have part of the political reason for such methods, reasons having nothing to do with actually solving the problem. Generally, when trying to solve a problem, one strives for methods that work and actually do solve the problem. Useless methods are discarded quickly if they do not yield the desired results.
In Part III, he returns to the definition of “fairness” used by liberals and shows how the flaw that permeates their thinking is precisely their attempt to disconnect inputs and outputs. Consequently, anything that provides criteria to distinguish amongst individuals becomes anathema to them. The impact of this kind of thinking on various aspects of our culture and society is detrimental to the extreme (emphasis added):
Most of us want to be fair, in the sense of treating everyone equally. We want laws to be applied the same to everyone. We want educational, economic or other criteria for rewards to be the same as well. But this concept of fairness is not only different from prevailing ideas of fairness among many of the intelligentsia, it contradicts their idea of fairness.
…
Tests and other criteria which convey the realities of their existing capabilities, compared to that of others, can have what is called a "disparate impact," and are condemned not only in editorial offices but also in courts of law.
But criteria exist precisely to have a disparate impact on those who do not have what these criteria exist to measure. Track meets discriminate against those who are slow afoot. Tests in school discriminate against students who did not study.
Disregarding criteria in the interest of "fairness"– in the sense of outcomes independent of inputs– adds to the handicaps of those who already have other handicaps, by lying to them about the reasons for their situation and the things they need to do to make their situation better.
This series concludes in Part IV with a discussion of racial differences (note I did not say racial genetic differences) and how common they actually are despite what liberals, and even some conservatives, want to believe.
It is also a hard fact of history that some races had far more advanced technological, economic and other achievements than others at particular times and places. But those who were ahead in some centuries were often behind in other centuries–the Chinese and the Europeans having changed positions dramatically after Europe eventually caught up with China and then surpassed it within recent centuries. But there was no evidence of any dramatic changes in genetics among either the Chinese or the Europeans.
The conclusion of the matter for Dr. Sowell’s current treatise (emphasis added):
Fairness as equal treatment does not produce fairness as equal outcomes. The confusion between the two meanings of the same word has created enormous mischief, much of it at the expense of lagging groups, who have been distracted from the things that would enable them to catch up. And whole societies have been kept in a turmoil pursing a will o’ the wisp in the name of "fairness."
To expand upon Dr. Sowell’s analysis, because the current definition of “fairness” is a fallacy, it actually leads to injustice in theory and practice when trying to solve alleged problems of unfairness (thus the title of this post). “Fairness” has its foundation on the subjective judgment and relativistic thinking of those seeking to implement it, not on an objective set of principles. The laws of this country, and of our mother country, England, were grounded in the jurisprudence of the Christian Bible (despite what your liberal teacher may have told you). Thus justice establishes guilt when God’s standards are violated. “Fairness” tries to remove guilt by lowering the standards rather than establishing true guilt by comparison with an objective standard. If we are truly guilty, we should confess our failures and plead for mercy, but this assumes personal responsibility to a “higher power,” another anathema to the liberal mind which acknowledges nothing greater than itself. Thus, personal rights and justification of failure rule the day for those seeking “fairness.”
True justice is impartial, objective, and unemotional. This is why the famous statue of Justice wears a blindfold. Favoritism is not to be shown to the rich, but also not to the poor (see e.g., Exodus 23:2-3). “Fairness” is subjective and based on arbitrary emotional considerations with appeals to those emotions leading to decisions that swing wildly away from justice. As one example, justice allows an employer to be generous by giving extra to employees who might be in extra need. “Fairness” says “not so!” “Fairness” laws require employers to give each person in a given job classification the same pay, regardless of individual need (and all too often regardless of individual ability; see Matthew 20:1-15).
In the long run, justice provides an objective and unchanging yardstick by which to measure character and behavior flowing from that character, thus holding the individual responsible. In sharp contrast, “fairness” generates humanistic laws that hold society guilty for an individual’s offense and helps to create the attitude of entitlement that ultimately will crush the spirit of a nation.
Let’s put some flesh to this discussion with a more concrete example:
If you answered “no,” you are thinking like a liberal. Justice correctly answers “yes.”
Why is this system just? Note that it is not said that the poor cannot achieve riches, nor does it limit the means of doing so. Poverty is not a cause; it is an effect. The right behaviors in a just system will lead to success whereas wrong behaviors will lead to failure.
To place this discussion into the context of the Christian worldview, poverty is an essential function in God’s larger purposes of training, chastening, directing, and rewarding. Jesus said, “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always” (Matthew 26:11). God does not look upon the poor as being a permanent class of people but rather as being in transition. This is important, because God ties poverty and riches without sorrow to obedience of His laws. “…Observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day…and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow…” (Deuteronomy 15:5-6).
God clearly states that He made the poor (cf. Proverbs 17:5), and that He gives power to get wealth (cf. Deuteronomy 8:18). Thus an economic system is not a primary cause but only a resulting factor. Those who condemn an economic system as being the primary cause of poverty both deny God His sovereignty and fail to grasp that the success or failure of any economic system is heavily dependent on the character of the individuals in that system and on the underlying assumptions made by those who craft the system. Some of the causes of poverty include:
Note that all these are based on personal character. If you construct a system that has an incorrect view of human nature (cf., e.g., socialism and its humanistic assumptions), it will be a house built upon sand that will collapse when stress and trials come upon it (Matthew 7:24-27).
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