"Privilege" vs "Underprivileged"??

Unfairly promoting a less talented person over a more talented person because of his respective skin colors is celebrated as a victory for “diversity” — a reminder that in the twenty-first century, racists are still obsessed with how a person looks at the expense of what thoughts occupy his mind.  Without any public debates or votes, governments have replaced “equal treatment under the law” with “equitable” redistribution — or, in layman’s terms, “special treatment under the law” — so that certain classes of people can benefit at the expense of others.  

In an amazing instance of Orwellian “doublespeak,” the State categorizes those classes that are unfairly rewarded as “underprivileged” and the people against whom it discriminates as “privileged.”  Never in human history have people with “privilege” felt so marginalized.  All this cheating is done for the stated purpose of “including” many different kinds of people, but it depends entirely on “excluding” people to obtain fraudulently manufactured and prejudiced results.  

None of this is fair.  Stealing the earned successes of some, so that others may benefit without sacrifice, has a tendency to permanently scar both the victim of the theft and the supposed beneficiary.  When hard work and dedication are spurned, a seed of dejection is planted that can spoil an otherwise promising life.  When unearned rewards become expected entitlements, the enriching pursuit of human excellence withers and often dies.

J.B. Shurk, The Catastrophic Death of Fairness

Destroying Merit Among "Races"

There are two ways to get more even outcomes—help those in need to get ahead or to punish those who are successful by pulling them down. The Left’s goal of leveling the playing field by pulling down those who took that which they were given and made something out of it will not help the poor. Denying Whites admission or advancement will not make non-Whites more successful. Harvard admitted in court that without their denying many Asian students acceptance to the undergraduate college, the Black population on campus would be much smaller. Harvard’s goal should have been to help Black students become more competitive prior to applying. Harming Asian applicants who threw themselves into their studies and activities to be worthy of admission is a sign of a failed admission system. The lawsuit brought by Asian student organizations against Harvard was recently heard by the Supreme Court.

The goal of throwing white privilege at people who of no fault of their own were born Caucasian and of means or backgrounds not of their choosing will not help Blacks, Hispanics and others to succeed. The goal is simply to pull down those who strive so that we can all be mediocre together. Rather than demanding that rigorous standards be met for college acceptance, joining the SEALs or being accepted for pilot training, standards are lowered—even the SAT is being abandoned. Those who succeed are not lauded for their efforts and determination but rather are accused of being recipients of gifts and background conditions that were unfair as if their personal efforts in maximizing the usefulness of their starting conditions were meaningless. Claims of white privilege are based on the destructive idea that we should all have equality of outcomes (“equity”) rather than allowing each and every American to succeed according to his/her abilities and personal efforts. By demanding equality of outcomes and accusing Whites of having some privilege that gives them an unfair leg up in all of life’s activities, those on the Left are demanding mediocrity; they are effectively telling students not to push themselves, not to try their best, because whatever they do, the results are not theirs and that their successes have been at the expense of others.

Alan Joseph Bauer, The Falsehood of White Privilege.

Victimhood Destroys

Victimhood grants a moral superiority that liberates the victim from moral responsibility.

If you’re an official victim, you can rampage around cities, looting, beating and burning, with few legal and certainly no moral consequences. Beyond economics, replacing ‘equality’ with ‘equity’ takes us from an equality of moral obligations to an equity of moral outcomes. And race riots, canceling people, and rigging college admissions are just ways of achieving ‘moral equity’.

Daniel Greenfield, A Nation of Victims is Doomed to Fail.

Women Are NOT Sex Objects

Prostitution is one of the most severe ways possible to demean women. Since she is made in the image of God, prostitution is a gross example of dehumanizing exploitation and a far cry from the glad use of sex that God intends. Made in God’s image, women are not mere sex objects, but human beings, equal to men in all respects (Gal.3:28) and not to be toyed with or exploited by them.

John H. Scanzoni, Wycliffe Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Carl F.H. Henry editor, pg.545

There Will Always Be Inequality

Human beings are obviously unequal in numberless ways, including: health, opportunities, abilities, energy, moral character, and contribution to society. It is essential, therefore, in asserting the equality of all men to delineate the nature and the source of that equality. In Christian ethics the nature of equality is that all men are equally to be loved — not equally admired, or emulated, or praised; but equally loved.

Calvin D. Linton, Wycliffe Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Carl F.H. Henry editor, pg.213-214.

Life is A Relay Race

To deny that a particular factor can be assumed a priori to be the cause of inequalities in outcomes is not to deny that the chances of achieving those outcomes have in fact been grossly unequal in societies around the world, and over thousands of years of recorded history. In a sense, life is a relay race, and each of us receives the baton at a time and place over which we have no control. Our parents, our birth order, our country and our surrounding culture have already been predetermined for us. Some of the prerequisites for achievement can be affected later by individual choices or social policies, but by no means 100 percent in most cases, much less in all cases. No human being and no human institution has either sufficient knowledge or sufficient power for that. More important, we have zero control over the past— and, as was said, long ago, “We do not live in the past, but the past in us.”

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, Pg.187

The Evil of Egalitarianism

Because egalitarianism weakens communities and thus deprives men of an identity-giving habitat, it creates a vacuum around them. Hence a desire exists for a new identity, this time modern and in line with the spirit of militant egalitarianism. The ideologies fulfill this role perfectly. They organize people's consciousness by providing them with the meaning of life, an individual and collective purpose, an inspiration for further endeavors, and a sense of belonging. With the emergence of ideology the problem of a lonely individual in an egalitarian society no longer exists: feminism makes all women sisters; ;all homosexuals become brothers in struggle; all environmentalists become a part of an international green movement; all advocates of tolerance join the ranks of a universal antifascist crusade, and so on. Once a man joins an ideological group all becomes clear to him and everything falls into place; everything is either right or wrong, correct or incorrect. And this perception soon changes the man himself.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.137

Equality Invites Despotism

To a certain degree, equality invites despotism, because in order to make all members of society equal, and then to maintain this equality for along period of time, it is necessary to equip the controlling institutions with exceptional power so they can stamp out any potential threat to equality in every sector of the society and any aspect of human life: to paraphrase a well-known sentence by one of Dostoyevsky’s characters, “We start with absolute equality and we end up with absolute despotism.” Some call it a paradox of equality: the more equality one wants to introduce, the more power one must have; the more power one has, the more one violates the principle of equality; the more one violates the principle of equality, the more one is in a position to make the world egalitarian.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.133

Invented “Dignity”

Since the issue of the [1948] Universal Declaration [of Human Rights], dignity has no longer been about obligation, but about claims and entitlements. The new dignity did not oblige people to strive for any moral merits or deserts; it allowed them to submit whatever claims they wished, and to justify these claims by referring to a dignity that they possessed by the mere fact of being born, without any moral achievement or effort. A person who desired to achieve the satisfaction of a pig was thus equally entitled to appeal to dignity to justify his goals as another who tried to follow the path of Socrates, and each time, for a pig and for a Socrates, this was the same dignity. A right to be a pig and a right to be a Socrates were, in fact, equal and stemmed from the same moral (or rather nonmoral, as the new dignity practically broke off with morality) source.

Having armed himself with rights, modern man found himself in a most comfortable situation with no precedent: he no longer had to justify his claims and actions as long as he qualified them as rights. Regardless of what demands he would make on the basis of those rights and for what purpose he would use them, he did not and, in fact, could not lose his dignity, which he had acquired for life simply by being born human. And since having this dignity carried no obligation to do anything particularly good or worthy, he could, while constantly invoking it, make claims that were increasingly more absurd and demand justification for ever more questionable activities. Sinking more and more into arrogant vulgarity, he could argue that this vulgarity not only did not contradict his inborn dignity, but it could even, by a stretch of the imagination, be treated as some sort of an achievement. After all, can a dignity that is inborn and constitutes the essence of humanness, generate anything that would be essentially undignified and nonhuman?

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.33

Responsibility is Lacking in Today's Culture

“Responsibility” poses a quandary for us today, as it presupposes a standard toward which to be responsible. But as standards have been attacked as products of “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “imperialism,” and other nefarious forces, the notion of duty has steadily vanished.

The result has been a growing sense of entitlement and narcissism. Consider the widespread hostility toward a recent proposal to eliminate loan “forgiveness” for graduate students. The policy would stop the government from “forgiving” student loan debt after a certain number of years. The idea is that, if one is privileged enough to go to graduate school, one who isn’t shouldn’t be forced to pay for the one who is.

However, one outlet described the idea as a “sick joke. A billionaire president and billionaire education secretary, neither of whom spent a single day of their lives in public service before stumbling their way into positions of immense power, are targeting a program that’s basically meant to make life in underpaid government work a little more tenable.”

Only a mindset that says “I am entitled to graduate school on another’s dime” would argue that preventing other people from being forced to pay for (“forgive”) another’s loan is a “sick joke.” Furthermore, the idea that “public service”—meaning government employment—is nobler than private-sector work is only further evidence of our cultural entitlement. Private markets create wealth, products, and jobs, which improve lives. Government merely consumes the wealth private markets create. That those who consume feel entitled to the wealth created by others is the height of the narcissism that pervades modern society.

Without standards of virtue which transcend the self, the self becomes the standard. At that point, as Protagoras remarked, “Man is the measure of all things.” In today’s culture, that is increasingly so.

David Weinberger, “We Don’t Have An Income Inequality Problem, We Have An Ego Problem”

Freedom and Obligation

Our era is one in which different treatment or different outcomes are inherently suspect. It is all too commonly thought that we all deserve the same reward or the same status, notwithstanding the differences in our efforts or in our abilities. This is why we hear so often about what is deserved or who is entitled. By this way of thinking, the student who treats spring break like a seven-day bacchanalia is entitled to the same success as the conscientious classmate who works and studies while he plays. And isn’t this same sense of entitlement often applied today to freedom? . . .

Today, when it seems that grievance rather than responsibility is the main means of elevation, my grandfather’s beliefs may sound odd or discordant. But he and others like him at the time resolved to conduct themselves in a way consistent with America’s ideals. They were law-abiding, hardworking, and disciplined. They discharged their responsibilities to their families and neighbors as best they could. They taught us that despite unfair treatment, we were to be good citizens and good people. If we were to have a functioning neighborhood, we first had to be good neighbors. If we were to have a good city, state, and country, we first had to be good citizens. The same went for our school and our church. We were to keep in mind the corporal works of mercy and the great commandment: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Being wronged by others did not justify reciprocal conduct. Right was right, and two wrongs did not make a right. What we wanted to do did not define what was right—nor, I might add, did our capacious litany of wants define liberty. Rather, what was right defined what we were required to do and what we were permitted to do. It defined our duties and our responsibilities. Whether those duties meant cutting our neighbor’s lawn, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, or going off to war as my brother did, we were to discharge them honorably. . . .

Today there is much more focus on our rights and on what we are owed, and much less on our obligations and duties—unless, of course, it is about our duty to submit to some new proposed policy. . . .

My grandfather often reminded us that if we didn’t work, we didn’t eat, and that if we didn’t plant, we couldn’t harvest. There is always a relationship between responsibilities and benefits. In agrarian societies, that is more obvious. As society becomes more complex and specialized, it is more difficult to discern. But it is equally true. If you continue to run up charges on your credit card, at some point you reach your credit limit. If you continue to make withdrawals from your savings account, you eventually deplete your funds. Likewise, if we continue to consume the benefits of a free society without replenishing or nourishing that society, we will eventually deplete that as well.  If we are content to let others do the  work of replenishing and defending liberty while we consume the benefits, we will someday run out of other people’s willingness to sacrifice—or even out of courageous people willing to make the sacrifice.

Clarence Thomas, “Freedom and Obligation,” 2016 Hillsdale College Commencement Address.

The American Dream

A Living Wage But Wage Equality?

Economic Equality Is An Impossibility

In trying to come up with alternatives to the welfare state, even some staunch conservatives have created plans that exempt low-income people from paying taxes, or plans that provide some basic income to all, making it unnecessary to work. But exempting anyone from responsibility and reciprocity as members of society risks disaster for those individuals and for society.

Egalitarians never seem to understand that promoting economic equality in theory means promoting resentments and polarization in practice, making everyone worse off.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts

To Liberals, Being Blessed is Unfair

What is it about the family that stands in the way of the socialist project? My wife was born to an old English family. It has a long history and has been in the same part of England forever and ever. Compared to that I am a mongrel. I was raised in a small town in Arkansas, and my family was not wealthy. But on the other hand, my dad went to college, and he loved to read books. He became a schoolteacher. My mother was proud that she was valedictorian of her class—dad was only salutatorian—and she too loved books. So there was always someone around to read to me and encourage me to read. And there were always books around to read. That is a blessing, but it is not a blessing that everybody enjoys—and that is perceived as unfair. The president of France has proposed in that country that homework be outlawed, because it is unfair that some parents but not others help their kids with it. Along the same lines, the U.S. Secretary of Education recently said that there are so many broken homes in the inner city—broken families that are subsidized of course by government policy—that we are going to have to think about building dormitories in which to raise the children. Think what this means for the liberal state, if it commits itself to an engineering project to take over childrearing and make everything equal—to remake society on a scientific basis.

Larry P. Arnn, President, Hillsdale College, “Property Rights and Religious Liberty.”  Imprimi, December 2015.

Equal Opportunity

Equal opportunity means not that everyone must start with the same skills and social contacts, but that no one must be prohibited by law from attempting something morally legitimate in the marketplace.

David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, pg.702

True Equality

Man is unequal in time allocated for him; talent entrusted to him; and treasure required of him.  Man is only equal to man before the bar of justice.

Author unknown, cited by David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, pg.702

Education is the Great Equalizer

The great equalizer in America remains education. A good education or the acquisition of technical skills provides tremendous options for everyone, regardless of their birth circumstances. We live in a country where people are free to move without penalty to any state where jobs are available. We need to emphasize the fact that almost any kind of employment confers knowledge and skills that become valuable when trying to move up the economic ladder.

Dr. Ben Carson, Dispelling the Myth of Haves and Have-Nots in America

Class Resentment?

Obviously, the billionaire can afford to pay for certain things like luxurious homes and cars and the best seats on airplanes and at the theater. There is nothing wrong with that. It should not cause resentment in a society in which anyone is free to work hard and use their God-given talents to excel and increase their own value in the marketplace.  Some will not admit it, but our society would be pretty dreary if everyone shared the same level of poverty with no chance of advancing themselves economically through their own efforts.

Dr. Ben Carson, Dispelling the Myth of Haves and Have-Nots in America

America Really Is Great

The U.S Constitution was designed to preserve the freedom and rights of all citizens. Our Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal and that we have certain God-given rights. With documents like these, how have we arrived at the state of such discord between purported haves and have-nots in our society?

Some will try, of course, to discount any discussion of this topic by talking about the treatment of slaves, indentured servants, Native Americans and others who historically were not treated well. I am willing to acknowledge that the same human frailties that characterized societies throughout the world found their way into America, but it is unfair to demonize a nation and its many constituents based on the shortcomings of some of its members. Those who condemn America for its past seldom talk about the tremendous good and generosity that have been demonstrated by the country that cannot be denied the title of most benign pinnacle nation in the history of the world.


Dr. Ben Carson, Dispelling the Myth of Haves and Have-Nots in America