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Posted on 07/21/2012 9:27:53 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There was a time, within living memory, when the achievements of others were not only admired but were often taken as an inspiration for imitation of the same qualities that had served these achievers well, even if we were not in the same field of endeavor and were not expecting to achieve on the same scale.
The perseverance of Thomas Edison, as he tried scores of materials for the filament of the light bulb; the dedication of Abraham Lincoln as he studied law on his own while struggling to make a living — these were things young people were taught to admire, even if they had no intention of becoming inventors or lawyers, much less president of the United States.
Somewhere along the way, all that changed. Today, the very concept of achievement is de-emphasized and sometimes attacked. Following in the footsteps of Barack Obama, Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard has made the downgrading of high achievers the centerpiece of her election campaign against Senator Scott Brown.
To cheering audiences, Professor Warren says, “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You build a factory out there, good for you, but I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate.”
Do the people who cheer this kind of talk bother to stop and think through what she is saying? Or is heady rhetoric enough for them?
People who run businesses are benefiting from things paid for by others? Since when are people in business, or high-income earners in general, exempt from paying taxes like everybody else?
At a time when a small fraction of high-income taxpayers pay the vast majority of all the taxes collected, it is sheer chutzpah to depict high-income earners as somehow subsidized by “the rest of us,” whether through paying for the building of roads or the educating of the young.
Since everybody else uses the roads and the schools, why should high achievers be expected to feel like freeloaders who owe still more to the government, because schools and roads are among the things that facilitate their work? According to Elizabeth Warren, it’s because it is part of an “underlying social contract.”
Conjuring up some mythical agreement that nobody saw, much less signed, is an old ploy of the Left — one that goes back at least a century, when Herbert Croly, the first editor of The New Republic magazine, wrote a book titled “The Promise of American Life.”
Whatever policy Herbert Croly happened to favor was magically transformed by rhetoric into a “promise” that American society was supposed to have made — and, implicitly, that American taxpayers should be forced to pay for. This pious hokum was so successful politically that all sorts of “social contracts” began to appear magically in the rhetoric of the Left.
If talking in this mystical way is enough to give you control of billions of the taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars, why not?
Certainly someone who claimed to be part Indian, as Elizabeth Warren did when applying for academic appointments in an affirmative-action environment, is unlikely to be squeamish about using imaginative words during a political-election campaign.
Sadly, this kind of cute use of words is not confined to one political candidate or to this election year. The very concept of achievement is a threat to the vision of the Left, and has long been attacked by those on the Left.
People who succeed — whether in business or anywhere else — are often said to be “privileged,” even if they started out poor and worked their way up the hard way.
Outcome differences are called “class” differences. Thus when two white women, who came from families of very similar social and economic circumstances, made different decisions and got different results, this was the basis for a front-page story titled “Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’“ in the July 15 issue of the New York Times. Personal responsibility, whether for achievement or failure, is a threat to the whole vision of the Left, and a threat it goes all-out to combat, using rhetoric uninhibited by reality.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. ©
Squaw flip many tee-pees in Oklahoma, make much wampum.
Now a member of dreaded 1%.
There are no creators in the world (including the one above). For someone to be a real creator he had to get here by parthenogenesis and raise himself without the help of any parents or even an orphanage /total sarcasm off....
It's coming.
As Rush pointed out this week, the Soviet Union had roads, bridges, and schools.
Maybe Elizabeth Warren should explain why I pay for bike paths, rain gardens, and public transportation while so few of us will ever use any of them.
Damn, I wish Scott Brown were one one-hundredth as articulate as Thomas Sowell.
It’s a sickness. These idiots are desperate to salvage their own sinking careers and they don’t care who they need to divide in order to achieve their selfish aims.
They are the worst of the worst. Scum and certainly undeserving to “represent” the “little people” they so nobly claim to be on the side of. Time to deny them their selfish ambitions and pressure them to get the hell out of the country. Go live where they can dupe others with their BS.
> Go live where they can dupe others with their BS.
Why do that when people in this country are so easily duped?
I’ve got friends and relatives in foreign countries asking how we could elect a known communist.
All I can do is shrug and say, I don’t vote for them.
True (haha). Why aren’t we taxing umbilical cords?
Let's be sure to tax those at the same time the Democrat party seizes our 401ks.
Bravo Mr. Sowell.
Since the government has no money, how can they build anything? Therefore, all the money that the government does end up with comes from businesses and individuals - so it’s those businesses and individuals that build everything. Government simply coordinates the effort on our behalf.
This is a systems delusion of libtards which they all share and consider to be reality and normal. It's called manager's mirage and it is a confusion of cause and effect. They believe that some outcome (the ability to do a job successfully) is actually caused by the operation of the system ( the public school system). The public school system takes the credit for the good job that successful workers do rather than the workers themselves.
Who's we white woman? (takeoff on and old Lone Ranger/Tonto joke)
The rich pay to build and maintain the roads for the 50% that don’t pay any taxes. The rich would be more than happy to pay their fair share for all government services. But some are starting to resent having to pay 10 times their “fair” share, while the bloodsuckers on the left are screaming for more.
Mind if I call you by your indian name. MOONBEAM SHADOW ON EMPTY LOT. Moonbeam, what came first the roads or the automobile. I know as an indian you probably don’t use roads to much.
I guess Obama Thinks everyone is either a Kennedy Or a Rockefeller
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