The Republican Obsession With 'Restoring' America

“Creating “economic opportunity for everyone” is hard enough in a country of 316 million.”

No, it’s actually rather easy. For example, if Obama simply resigned, that would instantly create more economic opportunity for everyone, since he is currently depressing the economy by his very presence.

“Restoring it is a metaphysical impossibility. To restore something, it must have existed before. And never in its history has America offered “economic opportunity for everyone,” not even in the Edenic days of President Reagan.”

Opportunity is not a binary, it’s a sliding scale. Everyone, always, has some level of economic opportunity, so this argument is false on its face.

To restore something, it must have existed before. And never in its history has America offered “economic opportunity for everyone,” not even in the Edenic days of President Reagan.

This is why illegals come here; this is why tens of millions of dowtrodden Europeans came a centry ago--because there's NO economic opportunity here. They all gave or give up their homelands looking for a permanent residence in the US in order to be oppressed.

The world used to look to the United States to step in and fix every problem, often requiring the kind of resources that could only be possible because economic opprtunity once existed here.

And Atlantic continues its slide into complete irrelevance, busily rewriting the past while the present careens out of control. They're all like that on the Left.

Wouldn't it be nice, for example, to climb out of this cesspool of racial hatred the Left has churned up for us and restore the comity of the Reagan years? Yes, it really was better then than now. How about restoring a housing loan industry that actually could make and refuse loans without government interference? What about restoring the control of curricula to local school boards? Or even prying little Johnny's lunch menu from the clutches of porky Washington elitists?

Need I continue into every arena the Left has merrily screwed up between Carter, Clintoon, and 0bama? A military concerned with military matters instead of social ones? An oil industry unconstrained by the welfare of obscure organisms that no one has ever heard of and that nobody can eat? The ability to purchase a firearm without a third degree reminiscent of Josef Stalin? A culture not too constipated to produce Airplane and Blazing Saddles? A time when Civics was taught in secondary schools instead of anal sex?

Like hell it was mythical.

The author make a common error, likely intentionally.

“Economic opportunity” is NOT “economic equality”.

Economic opportunity is very real, very likely, and the US has had it in the past. Economic equality, on the other hand, is bitter fantasy, and efforts to force it on people don’t just result in tearing down the successful, but also in greater *inequality*. It not only hurts the successful, but it hurts the unsuccessful.

Economic opportunity means, to start with, the *opportunity* to have a good education. Conservatives found that because public education is often terribly flawed, the best *opportunity* for a good education is with school vouchers, religious and home schooling, especially where public education is failing.

But though they are given the *opportunity* to learn, many students reject that opportunity, so condemn themselves to inequality in the future.

For those who took the opportunity to become educated, the law now says that they deserve the same *opportunity* to get employment, *if* they are willing to compete for that same opportunity. *If* they are at least competitive, they cannot be turned down because of who they are.

And that is a golden opportunity.

So there is economic opportunity in a nutshell. Inequality exists there naturally, either because of the unwillingness to do the work, or because someone is naturally incapable.

And natural inequality deserves to be respected. If someone does not work at school, or is too dumb to learn, they must be allowed to fail. If someone is willing to offer them charity so they do not starve, that is between them as individuals; it is not up to government to sanction sloth or stupidity.

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