A Thought For Mother’s Day
May 12, 2007
Socialism, The Mark Of Cain
May 12, 2007
In The Bootstrap Nation; Bill Clinton’s Best Legacy?, the Anchoress breaks stride with the march du jour. As is often the case, she has trouble walking in lockstep with anyone. Clarity and a bit of insight will do that.
… we’ve been talking, for the last few days, about socialism and socialized programs, and why they don’t work, or how they encourage mediocrity. As the discussion spilled over into the comments sections, I wrote:
Sometimes people need a hand-out, yes, but making it a way of life has never ended up being a positive…No handout can replace the sense of pride one gets by accomplishing things on one’s own.
The emails on this subject have been wide-ranging and in one of them I was taken to task by a reader identifying herself as a “progressive” and requesting anonymity, who wagged a finger at me for advocating a “bootstraps” mentality that - to this woman’s way of thinking - is a “tired old canard” belonging “to the last century.”
…I wonder if my progressive reader would feel differently about the “bootstraps” mentality if she were to consider that Bill Clinton, one of her heroes, brought its value into sharp focus.
The Anchoress makes clear that that the conversation isn’t about politics. In fact, that is the last and least important of issues she addresses. Her discussion centers around the elevation of man and her observations about how that elevation is reached. Her views are more scientific than political.
We know that the highest achievements of man have always come about a response to restrictive thinking or restrictive ideologies. The environments that have restricted man from exercising his full potential produce two kinds of people- those who resist and ‘think outside the box’ and those who acquiesce.
Those who acquiesce become dependent. They lose the drive to achieve. Of course, human being are hard wired to achieve, so beating that drive out of us takes some work. Everything we know as instinctively true must be upended.
Life becomes defined as a zero sum game. Your success comes about as a result of someone else’s failure. Victory comes about at the cost of another’s shame. If you take pride in accomplishment, you only highlight the humiliation of someone less accomplished
Of course, those beliefs are the least ‘natural’ of human instincts and those beliefs are antithetical to science.
From the beginning of time, man has competed against nature, himself and other men. If he hadn’t, we would not have survived as a species. As a species, we need to exceed our capabilities and capacities. We excel because there is a fire in our bellies that cannot be extinguished. To fulfill our destinies as human beings, we must look within and find a way to leave our mark and excel. Animals adapt to their environment. Man adapts to his environment and excels in that environment.
Dr Sanity’s Science Is Under Attack- But From Whom? is a perfect complement to the Anchoress post. First, she quotes Yuval Levin:
..the left actually has a much more complicated set of problems with science that are explored far more rarely than those of the right. Scientific advance, for instance, is the great engine behind capitalism, and is in that respect responsible for much that the left has disliked about the west since the 18th century. Much of what progressives oppose is precisely progress. Science, extended beyond its appropriate bounds, is also the chief contemporary threat to our continued allegiance to the principle of human equality, which has been at the heart of the liberal worldview. Put simply, science seems to demonstrate we are not equal—this after all is the problem many on the left had with The Bell Curve. Of course, it only seems that way if you take a very peculiar view of what the principle of equality actually is. We are equal not in our natural capacities—obviously we are not all equally strong, or smart, or tall, or healthy—but in our standing as human beings in relation to something higher than ourselves. But the left is no longer well equipped to offer that defense of equality, since it requires all manner of premises they have given up.
She then goes on to make some very biting observations:
The assertion that I hear repeatedly in the academic setting is that science is “under attack” from the religious right. Yet what I actually observe time and again is that it is the secular left that is intent on suppressing ideas and research that aren’t ideologically pure…
One thing you can say about the religious right is that their desire to teach “intelligent design” (a theory I do not think has sufficient evidence to be included in children’s science textbooks) basically represents a rather desperate desire to have their religious views respected in a system that has deliberately and with malice aforethought been excluding them for years. even as other “religions” views are substituted. As examples, consider that even the word “Christmas” is prohibited in schools these days for fear of offending some sensitive leftist’s feelings; but these same leftists are eager to make sure kids learn all about Islam (we don’t want them to become Islamophobic, do we?), or that the religion of the left– multiculturalism– is integrated into the curriculum without so much as a by-your-leave.
We are also subjected to grown women (or should I say “indoctrinated feminists”?) who presume to call themselves “scientists” swooning when a University President suggests the possibility that factors other than sexism–i.e., biological considerations– might be at work in explaining disparities between women and men in academia. That University president was forced out of his position for daring to have such ideas and expressing them in a spirit of open-mindedness.
I guess some ideas are far too threatening to be freely discussedand debated.
So, which of the above two scenarios has had the most chilling effect on free speech in this country? The debate about intelligent design? Or the lack of one about the biological differences between males and females? I submit that the latter, which had serious repercussions on that particular University President and effectively warned anyone who might want to explore theories other than sexism that they would be appropriately persecuted.
Meanwhile, no one who advocates intelligent design theory or creationism has ever advocated (that I am aware) that evolution theory be struck from the curriculum and not be allowed in public discourse or debate. All they ask is that their ideas be included in the debate.
When politics dictates what is and isn’t human nature, humans will be abused.
Hope sparkles from the wheel, and all possibility is contained therein. And the man who can sharpen his own knife, and teach his children that craft, will never be helpless or hungry or cast aside as worthless. He will, therefore, be at peace, and so will his house, and columnists will write about it in wonder.
…the helping hand of necessary, but structured, social aid can uplift and encourage, while the hand-out of creeping socialism can only deplete and depress our human spirit, drive and ingenuity. It is a legacy of which any good conservative would be proud.
The truth the Anchoress speaks of is crystal clear- and that is why truth is so often under ferocious attack by those who need to negate the science and hard wiring that defines the human species. Their desperation can often times be regarded as pathetically desperate. The deceit of that desperation comes easily.
The generations of souls lost and forgotten to the socialist ideals and dreams of utopia will not be forgotten- especially by those that had to endure the ‘utopia’ that tried to extinguish the fire that made us human. As we have noted before, Utopia cannot be imposed without tyranny.
The elevation of man has always been a mark of honor and has served as the foundation of our greatest achievements. Socialism, the ideologues who would limit man, ideas and science, is the mark of Cain of our times. Those who wear it proudly, have learned nothing.
Those who have learned nothing, have failed at life.
