Should Olympians ‘race’ when everyone gets the same prize at the finish line?
Egalitarianism = equal outcomes. And equal outcomes are what Progressives want to have happen within our legal system, within our education system ~ within society as a whole.
Egalitarianism is posited as a means to create the unspoken Utopian bureaucratic island where near-perfect socio-politico-legal systems exist and where no one has advantage over another except for the so-called elite who have been ‘blessed’ with “superior intellect.” Only they know enough to define life for you. (e.g., Cass Sunstein’s recent Nudge book).
In my younger days I was a sprinter. I would run many heats and then the final events. To do so I had to prepare for the weekly track meet. I will use my own ‘summer event’ experience to help you to consider whether egalitarianism is equal to the hard work and discipline required for life’s trials and to decide whether the rise of “egalitarianism” will benefit or hurt our society.
I wrote the following as a ‘real-life’ depiction of my understanding of the “Constrained Vision” and the “Unconstrained Vision” as delineated by Thomas Sowell in his own favorite book A Conflict of Visions:
A Tale of Two Foot Races
Race Number One:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height and weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men enter the race knowing that there will only be one winner. It was for this outcome that they had prepared themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years.
Months prior to the track meet the eight men are told of the rules: A runner must run in qualifying heats. If the runner is successful in those heats the runner will then be allowed to compete in the final race with the other qualifying runners; a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will be disqualified as having a “false start”; the commands “Ready”, “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified; runners will be timed and the first runner to cross the finish line will be the winner of the race.
The runners all agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race and after qualifying in the heats eight runners come to the starting line. They know that they must run straight ahead in their own lane to reach the one-hundred meter line. They know that if they jump the gun twice they will be disqualified from running. They know that they must sprint as hard as they can to cross the finish line first. They are knowingly competing for first place. The race before them has now become the culmination of years of exhausting training and dedication to finishing the race and receiving first prize.
When the race is announced the runners shed their sweats and come to the starting line. The track official then announces, “Ready”. The runners will then carefully position their legs into the starting blocks and place their open hands stretched behind the starting line.
Once the runners have settled the track official then snaps “Set”. The runners immediately come up to a “set position”, coiled in their starting block. With the burst of the starting pistol eight men bolt from their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their disciplined bodies will carry them.
The winner of the race is the one who breaks the tape. There is also a second, a third and fourth place finisher. The runners-up each congratulate the winner for his speed and, implicitly, for his fidelity to the rules and his commitment to the sport of racing.
The first three finishers receive medals, adulation and wreaths of honor from the thousands who have come to watch a fair race between those who have so vigorously prepared themselves. The experience of the race has bolstered each runner’s self-esteem. The cheering crowd is also moved by each runner’s self-sacrifice, dedication and self-discipline. This spectacle has confirmed the crowd’s understanding of athlete’s playing by the rules and aspiring to excel within those rules. Those who witnessed the race that day are stirred, encouraged to excel at what they do.
All eight racers later return home. The runners-up are now more dedicated than ever to prepare for another day of racing and to receiving their own crown of victory. Ciltius, altius, fortius.
Race Number Two:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height, weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men entered the race knowing that everyone will be a winner. It was for this outcome that they saw no need to prepare themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years. They just had to show up.
Months prior to the race the eight men are told the rules. They are told the rules are subject to change at the time of the race based on the current ad hoc articulated reasoning of one superior intellectual with unquestionable virtue. A runner must run in qualifying heats but this will not be a constraint. Whether or not a runner is successful in those heats he will be allowed to compete in the final race with other ‘qualifying’ runners. The heats are basically events created to satisfy the need for more equality.
More rules: a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will not be disqualified from running. Instead he will be given another chance; the commands “Ready” and “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly, though any sincere attempt to cooperate with the official will be accepted; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified unless, of course, their background is such that they have never stayed within the lines; runners will not be timed because such keeping of minutes would be discrimination against slower runners. The first runner to cross the finish line will wait at the finish line so that everyone will be considered a winner of the race. This must be done at any personal cost to the first one crossing the finish line.
The runners agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race all of the runners come to the starting line. They know that they are supposed to run down to the finish line before the outcome-determining patrons. They know that there will be equal prizes and the egalitarian appreciation of well-wishers to look forward to. They are going to run for this reason. This race is now the culmination of years of knowing that the battle is just showing up and doing what you are told.
When all the runners are in their starting blocks and their hands are behind the starting line the track official then says, “Ready”. After a long moment of reasoned judgment the official says “Set”. The runners come up to set position. Then the race official shoots the starting gun. The eight men come out of their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their unfocused discipline has trained them.
At the finish line everyone is a Finisher, even those who left the race due to being out of breath. There are hand-shakes and kudos all around for having shown up for such an event.
At the awards ceremony all the runners receive medals and congratulations. Thousands have come to watch a race between runners who have shown up for a race where the outcome was predetermined to be fair ~ fair as defined by the few judges of superior intellect and of unquestioned virtue.
Later, all the runners return home and rest for another day of showing up.
Please! No more tattoos. Cover up your butterfly, your Mayan symbol of fertility, your undulating butt cheeks covered with spider webs. Cover up your magic marker body. I do not want to see it.
Please! No more women talking endlessly on cell phones while driving an SUV or a mini-van. They are multi-tasking my patience.
Please, no more skinny jeans. If I wanted to look at a blue toothpick then I will go puncture a Smurf.
Please, no more make-your-skin-crawl women: Rachel Maddcow, Ellen, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi.
Please, no more city mayors telling us we can’t drink a biggie size drink or carry a gun or have a Chic-fil-A restaurant in our district.
And please. No more government!
When you voted for Obama you voted to make your life harder. I know I know. You thought life would be better but you were deceived by the “social justice” propaganda.
Voting for tax and spend Democrats (Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi) means that you spend less time with your family and more time working to pay your bills. Sure Barrack and Michelle will continue to get Hawaiian vacations and Barrack will continue to play hundreds of hours of golf but your family will have to put off vacations because of … 1) rising Federal and State taxes, 2) because of government regulations affecting your workplace which affects your pay and 3) because of rising consumer prices due to corporation taxes. And, tax rate increases for the wealthy do not occur in a vacuum. Increasing the tax rates for the wealthy affects everyone negatively.
With Democrats you are placed in what I call a Moronic Squeeze: government through taxation (including the newly tax-mandated Obamacare) demands more of your money. So now you will have to work more hours in order to take care of your family. Then because you are both working so much you can’t spend time with your kids, time the kids desperately need. Instead, a public school takes over your children. Then the public school system demands more money to teach your children and then government will come back for more tax money from you. Phew! You and your children are put in an ever tightening vise by government.
More devastating, government creates fiscal and moral poverty; “social justice” is the scam that is used to take money from your pocket and put it where it best serves a politician and his reelection needs.
When both parents are working who’s with the kids? Are you letting the public school inculcate its “diversity” values into your children because you don’t have the time to spend with them, because you work so many hours to pay government for the first five months of the year?
Social justice, better simply, “justice”, is learned at home. Invest your money there and not in government: spend time with your children, teach them what is good. The returns will be great. Government gives you pennies on the dollar return on your tax payments.
When you keep more of your own money you have more options and more time to spend with family.Voting for more government – more Democrats – does not give you more time with your precious family. Instead you must work all the harder to meet government’s demands. Obamacare is only one of the huge financial demands now placed on the middle class.
2014 & 2016: Think about your family before you vote for more government (and less take home pay) in the form of a Democrat candidate.
Friday: I’m sitting at my desk minding my own business. The person who does the electronic file work for all of our projects stops by to talk to the guy in the next cube. The boisterous blather begins.
Ms. CEM (College Educated Moron) is from Michigan. She starts talking about Detroit being absorbed into the black hole of oblivion (self-destruction really). Then somehow the subject is changed onto public schools: “I don’t like charter schools.” The guy in the next cube can barely get a word in: “I like charter schools…” Ms. CEM takes a deep breath and throws her head back: “Well, I like public schools. I’m an advocate for good education. Good schools make good adults. I don’t have kids and I don’t want kids. It takes a village to raise a child.”
Ms. CEM is thirty years old, a Michigan State grad in Art history and easily twice my size. She sits directly on the other side of my cube where she spends her time talking about food and specifically, BACON. All day long. She eats cup cakes with bacon-infused frosting and bacon innards! She talks up food… all… day… long. And when she is not talking about food and gourmet restaurants and craft beers she is sighing heavily as if the weight of the village is being put on her again and again. This must be. She voted for the Obama village twice. I am as sure of this as I am that she will have some sort of bacon varietal for lunch. Lard Almighty!
I could see where Ms. CEM having kids would detract from a life of complete and utter self-indulgence. And why not self-indulge? Obama offered the Promised Baconland. (But Bottom-of-the-Barrel Detroit is what she’ll get.)
Besides, kids are a distraction. Better to ship them off like hogs and have them processed… into… bacon for those who union villagers who live off the fat of the land.
I didn’t jump in and tell her that had we home schooled two of our kids and that charter schools are the best hope for kids in one of the worst school systems in the US, the Chicago Public Schools. I also didn’t mention that Chicago will self-destruct like Detroit and that the village had run out of bacon. I’ll keep those pearls to myself.
I support myself and my family by working in the Free Market. I pay tons of taxes on money made in the Free Market. I pay all my bills including medical with money made in the Free Market. I give to charities and to those in need weekly from monies made in the Free Market, I find work and opportunity in the Free Market apart from a union…Do you have a problem with the Free Market?
Now here is something I have a problem with: why am I subsidizing people sitting on their ass? And, why am I subsidizing kids camping in a park protesting the Free Market? Why are illegals being allowed into the US and allowed to live off of me? Why is it that the Democrat’s only answer to every fiscal problem is “higher taxes” and it’s never to cut entitlement spending? And why, why is work punished?
For every 1.65 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance
For every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance or works for the government.
The punchline: 110 million privately employed workers; 88 million welfare recipients and government workers and rising rapidly.
And since nothing has changed in the past two years, and in fact the situation has gotten progressively (pardon the pun) worse, here is our conclusion on this topic from two years ago:
We have been writing for over a year, how the very top of America’s social order steals from the middle class each and every day. Now we finally know that the very bottom of the entitlement food chain also makes out like a bandit compared to that idiot American who actually works and pays their taxes. One can only also hope that in addition to seeing their disposable income be eaten away by a kleptocratic entitlement state, that the disappearing middle class is also selling off its weaponry. Because if it isn’t, and if it finally decides it has had enough, the outcome will not be surprising at all: it will be the same old that has occurred in virtually every revolution in the history of the world to date.
But for now, just stick head in sand, and pretend all is good. Self-deception is now the only thing left for the entire insolvent entitlement-addicted world.
Tax the wealthy and there will be no money for investments and new jobs. Monies for charities will dry up. Tax the wealthy and you hurt charities and the middle class the most. Obama has no clue as to what he is doing. Sadly, people voted for just another politician.
America deserves better than this media mollycoddled divisive passive-aggressive politician. The hangover from election night 2008 still has America off her feet.
****
This morning I bumped into our office’s cleaning lady. I’ll call her Dushanka.
Dushanka asked if I had watched the election coverage last night. I answered sadly that I did.
I never knew Dushanka’s political inclination before this morning. We previously had only talked before about our families and about work. We often talk when we arrive to work at 6:30 in the morning. We sometimes see each other during the long work day and then we also chat.
Dushanka came to America from Romania. She came to America because America was hope and change long before Obama came on the scene. Dushanka works long hard hours just as I do. We both pay our taxes and we obey the rules. But after watching the election results and the crowd at McCormick Place and on the street she told me, “America is now broken.” She could not fathom why those young people were standing there paying homage to Dear Leader, economic reality held in abeyance. Nor could I.
Dushanka told me something that I am no longer shocked about in Obama America: another cleaning women working with D cheats the “system” – you and me.
This woman, a foreigner, is using some else’s social security number. This woman has a child from a boyfriend. This woman registered the child at a Chicago Public school and received $200.00 (for what Dushanka didn’t know). This woman who works with Dushanka also receives food stamps. This same woman wrote on her job application that she had graduated from high school though she never graduated. All of these things and more this woman related to Dushanka in a rather smug way: “Look, I am getting away with this. You can too.” In other words she is “cleaning up” at our expense. That is Barack Obama’s America. And that is status quo for Chicago. It is quickly becoming so for the nation. This is Social Justice Obama style but is this going forward in a morally right direction?
Dushanka told me that she does not cheat the system: “That would be cheating God.”
Where is the Social Justice for people like Dushanka, for people like me? Where is the social justice when people steal from other Americans? And where is the social justice when people forcibly take your property and give it to someone else though taxation? Where is social justice in class warfare? In dividing the country racially? There can be no social justice when men are not given their due, when materialism trumps the justice due human dignity and worth.
Did you notice that our American ambassador and his aides were slaughtered in Benghazi? The Obama White House is covering up their decided lack of involvement. American citizens were killed but Obama played golf, campaigned and had another cigarette. Could it be that there is now in place “a U.S. government policy of “engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East,”? This is the biggest scandal in American History. The Obama regime wants to stonewall the whole business so that time will pass and people will forget. But we won’t forget.
Did you notice Fast and Furious – AG Eric Holder sends lethal weapons to narco-terrorists in a scheme to teach America a lesson about owning guns? The scheme backfired and a US border agent, an American citizen, is killed with the same guns along with hundreds of Mexicans. This is Social Justice Obama style.
Religious liberties are now being deleted for the new religion of political correctness. Moral relativism is replacing absolute truth.
Asstounding! People voted for more uncertainty, more unpredictability, more taxes, more regulation, more tight money, more policies that undermine business confidence and block economic recovery. They voted for more incompetence from Barack Obama!
Today’s children want socialism. And it is the very people who want socialism who bring nothing to the table. That is why they want redistribution of other people’s money – they have nothing to offer themselves.
People now want the government to be their insurance company and their vending machine for everything from birth control to abortions to health care. People now want government to cover all their bets and to give them other people’s money to play. The majority of people voted for the indentured slavery of big government and the Boot placed on their neck!
****
Obama’s Hope and Change cocktail has put our country on its back. The only cure for the “Goddamn America” hangover from the 2008 and 2014 election nights is “God Bless America.” The cure didn’t happen the last four years and it is not going to happen these next four years. The narcotic effects of atheism, nihilism, materialism and antinomianism (lawlessness) – an elixir of evil gulped down on those election nights will now spread rapidly through your system. Liberty won’t know what hit it.
Just ask D.
*****
Read The Forgotten Man – those who supply jobs and resources – requirements for human flourishing – are not the academics.
Since the elections are days away from taking place I thought it important to post information to help inform your decision. Our nation is at the tipping point of being destroyed. A second Obama Term will make that happen. Vote wisely and not with feelings that do not pay the bills.
Socialism does not work in Europe. It will not work in America either, no matter the label on the snake oil bottle: Progressivism or Social Justice or Redistribution of Wealth. It’s bad bad medicine.
“You didn’t build that.” We’ve all heard those dismissive words in the news recently.
Luckily, for all I involved, when I heard those words I didn’t jump up run out and burn an effigy of BHO or stampede my local DMV. I guess that’s because I didn’t inherit the Islamist strain of thin-skinned believer DNA that makes one go berserk at the mere thought of someone trivializing what they hold to be true. I did yell at the TV, though: “You’re full of yourself BHO.”
I am an ardent believer in the constrained view (see below), the view that incentives, individual hard work and prudent trade-offs builds houses on stone foundations. The unconstrained view of good intentions, big government and “divined” solutions builds houses on sand. And we all know what happens to each house when torrential rain comes. And, we all know what Liz Warren’s government built road to hell is paved with.
There is a reason why BHO diminishes the individual effort. BHO, of the central planning view, wants joy-stick control of the “invisible hand.” And I am not talking about “Thing” from the Addams Family comic or the other-worldly operator of the Ouija board.
The “invisible hand” of the market is a metaphor used by the father of modern economics and capitalism Adam Smith. Simply put, the metaphor describes the self-regulating behavior of the market place. Individuals seek to maximize their own gain in a free market society where goods and services are traded in a free exchange between both parties. For Smith the” invisible hand” guides individuals into mutually beneficial exchanges. Moral and socially beneficial behavior is evoked through the process. Fairness is part and parcel of market practices. Obeying the rules (i.e., standard weights and measures) is the order of the day in the market place. Contract laws were developed to help enforce agreements. If an agreement was broken a resolution in a court of law would be required. This is just and fair to everyone involved, because everyone is involved in protecting their own interests. Free market capitalism offers “The possibility of cooperation without coercion” as Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics once said. Regarding one-on-one resolution Jesus did say, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
Adam Smith theorized that the self-interest of individuals acting independently will lead to a socially optimal outcome. From Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter 2:
“As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other eases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. [emphasis added].”
Free market exchange encourages a man to, let’s say, go fishing. The man may eat the fish he caught or he may trade for something that will benefit himself. The fisherman is not coerced into doing either. He is free to do as he pleases with his fish. And another is free to trade with the fisherman – say, bread for fresh fish and both parties therefore benefit from the trade-off. The second party is also free to simply say “No, I don’t want your fish. I want to make tacos al pastor today.”
Again Adam Smith,
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”
On the other very visible hand, the well-intentioned-solutions hand, the government confiscatory and coercive hand taxpayer money is simply thrown at problems. Data abounds showing that well-intentioned-solutions (i.e., food stamp programs, Obamacare, minimum wages laws, etc.) never ever ever fix problems they were intended to solve. The “solution” is never a mutually beneficial exchange. Rather the solution is a one-way, one-time meal ticket that will always end up requiring more taxation, more regulation and less of your liberty. The only fishing taking place is in the mail box for the food stamps. BTW: The hand that provides the food stamps is an iron fist – “Do as I say or you will end up hungry,” “Buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty.”
Now, Adam Smith, and later Noam Chomsky invoking Adam Smith, warned of an unrestrained free market society where the “vile maxim of the masters can be pursued without undue interference.” In other words they thought government regulation (Smith much less, Chomsky much more) would hold the free market in check. One example: the fisher folk would not be allowed to restrict the wee folk from fishing, thereby preventing a monopoly on the fish market.
From what I can tell, both BHO and Chomsky see big corporations and Capitalism in general as behemoth American Devils who suck the air out of the world leaving societal corpses in their path. In each their own measure they see the free market, left on its own, turning into unconstrained selfishness. Yet, they see themselves as altruistic. And as a result of such myopic views of the free market and of themselves they are eager to throttle the life out of the free market with very visible “hands”, the hands of government regulation, taxation and confiscation – the hands of coercion. They truly believe that an unrestrained socialist statist (central planning) government under the guise of a (small “d”) democracy would be superior to an unrestrained free market within a big “D” democracy. But government, if you haven’t already noticed, is a monopoly. It is an all-powerful, ready-to-inflict pain monopoly. Who is holding the tyranny of government back? Not good intentions. Not nebulous open-ended “social justice” solutions. Not the voters. Take a look at congress – there are a lot of visible hands in the pie, grabbing at taxpayer money. They’ve want their clutches on your property because controlling redistribution is a means of staying in power.
The so-called “unrestrained super-national corporations” are in reality restricted to what the markets will accept. Countries all around this world invite corporations into their realms because they see the benefits. These corporations are not coercive like government is. And don’t think for a moment that your vote will restrain government. Those in power like to stay in power and to wield that power. They pass laws to keep themselves in power as State CEOs. Good intentions and redistribution solutions are simply “goodies” thrown out during the campaign parade. The public is left with the big mess after the parade.
My answer: Laissez-faire – a “hands-off” economic environment made possible by a majority vote for smaller government (big D, small g), less regulation and fewer hands in the pie. Vote for the person and party that will let you keep your money and control your life. You know what I am saying– restore LIBERTY. The end result will help generate the dynamic green energy needed for human flourishing. Human flourishing will then enable people to not have to think so hard about scrapping together an existence or worry about whether the hands of government will snatch away your property. Human flourishing will also allow more time for the sublime.
So, put your hand in the hand, the “invisible hand,” and let conscience be your guide, not the government.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” (A free will-free market exchange moved by the Invisible Hand of love.)
“Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.” Proverbs 10:4 (A statement of fact from the wisest man who ever lived – Solomon.)
Sally Paradise: “I built it with my own two hands.” Invisible hand: “And I helped.”
Definitions:
Laissez-faire (i/ˌlɛseɪˈfɛər–/, French: [lɛsefɛʁ] (listen)) is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from tariffs, government subsidies, and enforced monopolies, with only enough government regulations sufficient to protect property rights against theft and aggression. The phrase laissez-faire is French and literally means “let [them] do”, but it broadly implies “let it be,” “let them do as they will,” or “leave it alone.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire
Constrained view: The constrained vision sees man as he really is: self-motivated. This realistic vision sees man as selfish and greedy but also willing to respect tradition and rules and certainly able to make prudent trade-offs based on knowledge gained from centuries of accumulated knowledge and wisdom, knowledge and wisdom not confined to an omnipotent Decider. One with a constrained vision doesn’t have all the answers. He or she must operate with humility, tolerance and cooperation in order to support the freedom and liberty within which they seek to live.
Unconstrained view: The unconstrained vision relies heavily on surrogate decision makers, men or women of “superior” intelligence and virtue, to make our decisions for us. The implication of this vision is that the common man does not know what is good for himself and for those around him. But those with super-rational intelligence and sincerity do. And because of our lack of “fair and just” decision making, we the people need an over-arching Decider – someone to rein in society. (Recall Obama’s statement: “You didn’t build that.” He’s trying to rein in economic activity and attribute a man’s own blood, sweat and tears to government largesse!)
See my post What’s Left? To Be Decided for more information on the Constrained and Unconstrained Views, terms derived from Thomas Sowell’s book Conflict of Visions.
The obvious answer: political gain. But there may also be a not-so obvious reason.
A President who thinks that eighteen holes of golf is work enough has now decreed that laboring to obtain an otherwise free benefit is no longer required. Yet, free lunches, there ain’t no such thing. You the taxpayer are paying for someone to sit on their ass and collect welfare.
By presidential fiat just months before the November presidential election Obama has told us in effect that he doesn’t want the beneficiaries of welfare to have to strain themselves on the way to the 7-Eleven. Lifting that bottle of Jack or that can of malt liquor is work enough. Am I being cruel? No. You’ve been to the 7-Eleven and seen the line waiting to buy lottery tickets. Is this a generalization? Perhaps, but you can fill in your own eyewitness accounts. Obama by fiat diminishes individual effort and seeks to replace it with the collective effort (to win reelection.
What may not be so obvious a motive for this fiat by Obama, who is rabidly anti-colonialism (see Obama 2012, the movie), is his desire to denigrate the Protestant work ethic in America. Beyond political gain he may have decreed this because of his or his father’s own ill-will towards American missionaries. One can only speculate based on the familial and national dysfunction found in Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father.
Obama may very well have thought that American missionaries who were sent over many years from U. S. churches to foreign countries like Africa brought with them free-market enterprise, capitalism and the Protestant work ethic along with the Gospel. Because of Obama’s learned hatred of colonialism there would be little wonder when later Obama would sit within ear shot of the black liberation theology rants of “Rev.” Jeremiah (“God Damn America”) Wright. For Obama those “colonizing-looking” missionaries may have appeared to be bringing with them the shackles of Americanism. To Obama and Wright those falsely perceived “projected” purveyors of slavery via work ethic are anathema. And from Obama’s speeches one can readily tell that Obama detests anything American and especially the individual effort which produces human flourishing. Work is just to be a caged sideshow event outside Obama’s big circus tent of government. Obama’s Big Government Show does not need you to work. It just needs your ticket to the show (your vote).
This is the screwed up thinking born out of Obama’s father’s dreams. And, it is now America’s nightmare.
I learned about work from my father. He showed by his example how to support himself and his family. There were times when my dad worked at two jobs. He did what he had to do. He provided for his family and for his future. He also paid taxes and donated ten percent of his earnings to our local church. I’ve followed in my father’s footsteps (see my previous post). Obama on the other hand has no idea about what I talking about here.
Obama’s father spent his time drinking and womanizing. Obama’s “founding fathers” Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and mentor Frank Marshall Davis, a radical poet and former Communist, taught Obama how to radicalize what he felt inside.
Obama has learned nothing from his father except how to hate that mechanism that promotes cultural and material exchange and success via the marketplace. He hates the hard work that supports it. He lives in the valley of the shadow of colonialism.
Beyond this, Obama, in Howard Zinn-Noam Chomsky-like fashion defines America as the pompous ass that needs to bow the knee to the ever-gracious world – the same world that spits out Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, North Korea’s Kim Il-sung, Iran’s Ahmadinejad and countless terrorists and tyrants and those who support them. And like Zinn and Chomsky Obama thinks America has a big head. But what Obama and these other “big heads” don’t realize is that they are projecting their own dysfunctional personalities onto America.
Obama sees nothing exceptional about America. He sees America as the throw-away packaging that holds his own political gain.
Obama: why work so hard trying to reach for the stars when you can easily reach for your food stamps in the voting booth?
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What does the 2012 Obama Presidential election campaign look like? A collective of special interest groups (big labor unions, homosexuals, women on birth control who can’t afford to pay the five dollars every month to buy it even though they attend prestigious colleges, etc.), limp-wristed faux Indian progressives like Elizabeth Warren, extremely wack radicals like Van Jones, giant ‘plasticized’ Hollywood egos craving attention, Wall Street deep-pocket Super-Pac cronies, Green Energy Money Launderers, Occupy Whine Street-ers and all the disenfranchised “not-ready-to shovel” for their lunch people.
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Jesse Lee Peterson speaks w/ Dr. Dinesh D’Souza, NY Times Bestselling author of “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” and President of The King’s College. D’Souza’s new film, “2016: Obama’s America” – Love Him, Hate Him, You Don’t Know Him!
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
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“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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Cindy Wity 
Egalitarianism. Is It Equal To The Task?
February 5, 2014 Leave a comment
The 2014 Olympics is fast approaching…
Should Olympians ‘race’ when everyone gets the same prize at the finish line?
Egalitarianism = equal outcomes. And equal outcomes are what Progressives want to have happen within our legal system, within our education system ~ within society as a whole.
Egalitarianism is posited as a means to create the unspoken Utopian bureaucratic island where near-perfect socio-politico-legal systems exist and where no one has advantage over another except for the so-called elite who have been ‘blessed’ with “superior intellect.” Only they know enough to define life for you. (e.g., Cass Sunstein’s recent Nudge book).
In my younger days I was a sprinter. I would run many heats and then the final events. To do so I had to prepare for the weekly track meet. I will use my own ‘summer event’ experience to help you to consider whether egalitarianism is equal to the hard work and discipline required for life’s trials and to decide whether the rise of “egalitarianism” will benefit or hurt our society.
I wrote the following as a ‘real-life’ depiction of my understanding of the “Constrained Vision” and the “Unconstrained Vision” as delineated by Thomas Sowell in his own favorite book A Conflict of Visions:
A Tale of Two Foot Races
Race Number One:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height and weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men enter the race knowing that there will only be one winner. It was for this outcome that they had prepared themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years.
Months prior to the track meet the eight men are told of the rules: A runner must run in qualifying heats. If the runner is successful in those heats the runner will then be allowed to compete in the final race with the other qualifying runners; a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will be disqualified as having a “false start”; the commands “Ready”, “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified; runners will be timed and the first runner to cross the finish line will be the winner of the race.
The runners all agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race and after qualifying in the heats eight runners come to the starting line. They know that they must run straight ahead in their own lane to reach the one-hundred meter line. They know that if they jump the gun twice they will be disqualified from running. They know that they must sprint as hard as they can to cross the finish line first. They are knowingly competing for first place. The race before them has now become the culmination of years of exhausting training and dedication to finishing the race and receiving first prize.
When the race is announced the runners shed their sweats and come to the starting line. The track official then announces, “Ready”. The runners will then carefully position their legs into the starting blocks and place their open hands stretched behind the starting line.
Once the runners have settled the track official then snaps “Set”. The runners immediately come up to a “set position”, coiled in their starting block. With the burst of the starting pistol eight men bolt from their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their disciplined bodies will carry them.
The winner of the race is the one who breaks the tape. There is also a second, a third and fourth place finisher. The runners-up each congratulate the winner for his speed and, implicitly, for his fidelity to the rules and his commitment to the sport of racing.
The first three finishers receive medals, adulation and wreaths of honor from the thousands who have come to watch a fair race between those who have so vigorously prepared themselves. The experience of the race has bolstered each runner’s self-esteem. The cheering crowd is also moved by each runner’s self-sacrifice, dedication and self-discipline. This spectacle has confirmed the crowd’s understanding of athlete’s playing by the rules and aspiring to excel within those rules. Those who witnessed the race that day are stirred, encouraged to excel at what they do.
All eight racers later return home. The runners-up are now more dedicated than ever to prepare for another day of racing and to receiving their own crown of victory. Ciltius, altius, fortius.
Race Number Two:
Eight men enter a race. They are roughly about the same height, weight but come from very different backgrounds. The eight men entered the race knowing that everyone will be a winner. It was for this outcome that they saw no need to prepare themselves with rigorous discipline during the past four years. They just had to show up.
Months prior to the race the eight men are told the rules. They are told the rules are subject to change at the time of the race based on the current ad hoc articulated reasoning of one superior intellectual with unquestionable virtue. A runner must run in qualifying heats but this will not be a constraint. Whether or not a runner is successful in those heats he will be allowed to compete in the final race with other ‘qualifying’ runners. The heats are basically events created to satisfy the need for more equality.
More rules: a runner who jumps the gun twice at the starting line will not be disqualified from running. Instead he will be given another chance; the commands “Ready” and “Set” and a gun shot will be used by a track official to start the race fairly, though any sincere attempt to cooperate with the official will be accepted; each runner must stay in his lane or he will be disqualified unless, of course, their background is such that they have never stayed within the lines; runners will not be timed because such keeping of minutes would be discrimination against slower runners. The first runner to cross the finish line will wait at the finish line so that everyone will be considered a winner of the race. This must be done at any personal cost to the first one crossing the finish line.
The runners agree and sign off on the rules before the race.
On the day of the race all of the runners come to the starting line. They know that they are supposed to run down to the finish line before the outcome-determining patrons. They know that there will be equal prizes and the egalitarian appreciation of well-wishers to look forward to. They are going to run for this reason. This race is now the culmination of years of knowing that the battle is just showing up and doing what you are told.
When all the runners are in their starting blocks and their hands are behind the starting line the track official then says, “Ready”. After a long moment of reasoned judgment the official says “Set”. The runners come up to set position. Then the race official shoots the starting gun. The eight men come out of their starting blocks and run down the track as fast as their unfocused discipline has trained them.
At the finish line everyone is a Finisher, even those who left the race due to being out of breath. There are hand-shakes and kudos all around for having shown up for such an event.
At the awards ceremony all the runners receive medals and congratulations. Thousands have come to watch a race between runners who have shown up for a race where the outcome was predetermined to be fair ~ fair as defined by the few judges of superior intellect and of unquestioned virtue.
Later, all the runners return home and rest for another day of showing up.
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A Tale of Two Foot Races: Equal Opportunities vs. Equal Outcomes by Sally Paradise © Sally Paradise, 2013, All Rights Reserved
Added 2/7/2014:
Communism Leads to Slavery Not To Equality
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Filed under Egalitarianism, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary Tagged with A Conflict of Visions, egalitarianism, equality, Olympics, politics, social justice activism, the starting line, Thomas Sowell, unconstrained vision