Posted on 11/06/2007 9:13:56 AM PST by jazusamo
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Among the many mindless mantras of our time, "making a difference" and "giving back" irritate me like chalk screeching across a blackboard.
I would be scared to death to "make a difference" in the way pilots fly airliners or brain surgeons operate. Any difference I might make could be fatal to many people.
Making a difference makes sense only if you are convinced that you have mastered the subject at hand to the point where any difference you might make would be for the better.
Very few people have mastered anything that well beyond their own limited circle of knowledge. Even fewer seem to think far enough ahead to consider that question. Yet hardly a day goes by without news of some uninformed busybodies on one crusade or another.
Even the simplest acts have ramifications that spread across society the way waves spread across a pond when you drop a stone in it.
Among those who make a difference by serving food to the homeless, how many have considered the history of societies which have made idleness easy for great numbers of people?
How many have studied the impact of drunken idlers on other people in their own society, including children who come across their needles in the park -- if they dare to go to the parks?
How many have even considered such questions relevant as they drop their stone in the pond without thinking about the waves that spread out to others?
Maybe some would still do what they do, even if they thought about it. But that doesn't mean that thinking is a waste of time.
"Giving back" is a similarly mindless mantra.
I have donated money, books and blood for people I have never seen and to whom I owe nothing. Nor is that unusual among Americans, who do more of this than anyone else.
But we are not "giving back" anything to those people because we never took anything from them in the first place.
If we are giving back to society at large, in exchange for all that society has made possible for us, then that is a very different ballgame.
Giving back in that sense means acknowledging an obligation to those who went before us and for the institutions and values that enable us to prosper today. But there is very little of this spirit of gratitude and loyalty in many of those who urge us to "give back."
Indeed, many who repeat the "giving back" mantra would sneer at any such notion as patriotism or any idea that the institutions and values of American society have accomplished worthy things and deserve their support, instead of their undermining.
Our educational system, from the schools to the universities, are actively undermining any sense of loyalty to the traditions, institutions and values of American society.
They are not giving back anything except condemnation, often depicting sins common to the human race around the world as peculiar evils of "our society."
A classic example is slavery, which is repeatedly drummed into our heads -- in the schools and in the media -- as something unique done by white people to black people in the United States.
The tragic fact is that, for thousands of years of recorded history, people of every race and color have been both slaves and enslavers.
The Europeans enslaved on the Barbary Coast of North Africa alone were far more numerous than all the Africans brought to the United States and to the 13 colonies from which it was formed.
What was unique about Western civilization was that it was the first civilization to turn against slavery, and that it stamped out slavery not only in its own societies but in other societies around the world during the era of Western imperialism.
That process took well over a century, because non-Western societies resisted. White people, as well as black people, were still being bought and sold as slaves, decades after the Emancipation Proclamation freed blacks in the United States.
Those who want to "give back" should give back the truth. It is a debt that is long overdue.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.
This man is irreplaceable.
this is a great column.
Didn't realize it was that widespread, but we do have at least one documented case in our family tree that I know about.
It all goes back to the liberal creation myth: "In the beginning, there was a huge pile of cash in the desert - but dead white males got there first and stole it all." ;)
Amen Dr. Sowell!
I too, have always reacted viscerally to the phrase: “giving back.” I think it’s because it conjures up the lefty “zero-sum” economic worldview in which, if one makes a lot of money,it has to be through the taking it from the pocket of someone else less fortunate (presumably the proletariat).
In any case, right thinking populists know that if you’re rich you had to do something bad to get that way.
“Comrade commissar, my neighbor, Ivan Ivanovich, has two cows while I have only one. Please comrade, shoot my neighbor’s cow so we can both be equal again.”
They are not giving back anything except condemnation, often depicting sins common to the human race around the world as peculiar evils of "our society."
Put me on the Sowell ping list. He is the GREATEST political and cultural writer out there. Nobody even comes close.
Tagline worthy.
This is the reason libs fail so badly. They think it is enough that they INTEND good things. Never mind that they don't know enough to accurately predict the impact of their meddling. Vanity overrides consequences.
Thanks for the link, it’s an interesting account. I didn’t realize it was so widespread either.
Welcome Clemenza, you’re on.
Incidentally, I loved this column.
Of course, I rarely “dislike” a Sowell column.
The clintons started both of these mantras.
Another example is the dishonest naming of government "gun buy-back" programs.
I think the most insidious of the ‘make a difference’ crowd are the self styled journalists who use this mantra as an excuse to lunge into advocacy at every opportunity. I suppose they don’t deserve all the blame, however, because you can hardly go to a college commencement without hearing some witless politician or air head celebrity talking head encouraging the practice.
Great column.
Tonight, our Scouts will be passing out grocery bags for a canned food drive. We’ll go back out Saturday morning to collect them. While we are certainly helping those less fortunate and a few no-good leeches, we’re certainly not giving anything back.
Being in Michigan, there are plenty of people who have become recently poor due to loss of jobs and the pathetic demonrat economy.
Agreed...They’re a waste of time and money.
“Giving back in that sense means acknowledging an obligation to those who went before us and for the institutions and values that enable us to prosper today. But there is very little of this spirit of gratitude and loyalty in many of those who urge us to “give back.”
Sounds like Ortega y Gasset.
He’s at his best when he adds a tinge of humor to his great perceptions and insights.
He’s at his worst when he tries to come off purely scholarly and authoritatively — indistinguishable from the pompous aholes in academia and media.
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