And so the word has gone
forth to a new generation of Americans. Ask not what you can do for your
country; demand instead that your country do everything it can for you.
Somehow I don’t think if
those had been the words of JFK in his Inaugural Address, he would be
remembered as being an inspiring leader. Yet in a recent article by Michael Ian
Black, not only did he argue that his address had been a lie but that was the
attitude that America should have taken for all its citizens for his lifetime
and before.
I have frequently thought
that those on the left view so much of society – democracy, Republicans, even
America itself – as little more than a starter apartment that they are living
in while they wait for a home in their dream neighborhood to become available.
They don’t know where it is exactly, nor how they can find a way to afford it,
they just know they’re not living in it now. And until it becomes available,
they have the right to give as many suggestions as possible as to make their
residence more like the one they want. Usually they are complaints about how
the place they live is inadequate and the way to make it better is to make sure
is to make sure that the people who they have to live with – who they feel are beneath them – are quieter,
more agreeable to how they live in the place, no matter how loud or unpleasant
they are (while their neighbors loudness and unpleasant behavior can never be
tolerated) and that eventually there are enough of them that they don’t have to
listen to them anymore and they move into a different neighborhood ‘more
suitable’ for them. None of this will make this home remotely like what they
truly want and they will constantly complain until they decide to relocate to
some place closer to what they want when all that’s different is that there are
more people like them to complain how lousy this neighborhood is and how their
waiting for a similar opening in ‘the dream.’
Black
is, as some of you might be aware, a relative celebrity. Not much of a
celebrity as celebrities go but he’s rich and famous and therefore qualified to
talk about subjects that are beyond his intellect with authority. This is
nothing new, the entire world is filled with people who claim to be experts on
all things but whose only true expertise is wealth and privilege.
The reason Black might be
listened to more by some then others is because in this article he parrots
almost word for word what is leftist doctrine. America is a horrible nation
that has failed its citizens. It never realized its potential; now it’s a
failed state. (To the left all nations that do not fit their ideological
bandwidth are failures, which is an irony I’ll explain later.) It is a racist,
sexist, homophobic nation that can not keep its citizens safe. It’s political
system is so frozen and backwards that it is incapable of ever fixing
itself. And therefore people like him
don’t owe America anything.
How do I put this mildly –
you know how much so many leftists rail against the right for their fealty to
Ayn Rand and her doctrine of selfishness? That it was the job of the individual
to help themselves and not the nation, and it is on this policy a generation of
conservatism was founded? Black’s message and the opinion of so many other
leftists is the polar opposite of this. It is America’s duty to provide us with
all of the necessities we need to get through life and the citizen does not owe
the country anything. This is an argument so fundamentally ridiculous you
wouldn’t consider it plausible – and yet I know the truth in it every time I
ask a leftist author if they even vote and they never answer me. This is the
polar opposite of the Grand Unitary Theory – the citizen believes the
government owes them everything and they owe it nothing. This is the thinking
of an entire generation of Americans and we are now beginning to see the
effects.
Every time I make these
arguments to leftists I am, naturally, accused of being a bigot, conservative,
racist or any variation. So I’ll make it clear now if I haven’t before. I agree
in principle with every single thing you stand for.
Absolute equality among
races, genders and sexuality? Completely in favor of it. More income equality
for all? Who could argue with that? A better educational system? I couldn’t be
more in favor of it. The need for security from violence in all its forms?
Perfectly acceptable. A better way of doing things according to our government?
I fully agree its broken and needs repair.
I just have one question:
how? How do you do this within the limits of reality? How do you afford it? How
you do settle with the people who disagree with it? How do you maintain it? And
what would it take for us to move towards it realistically?”
No one has an answer,
certainly not Black. Because at the end of the day, they’re just as great with
blanket pronouncements as everybody else. The messy, long hard work that it
takes to get there – well, that’s for someone else to do. Certainly not them. Any
idiot can point out the problems in today’s society; five minutes on the
average cable news network will do this with no problem. And certainly anyone
can look back and see what we’ve done wrong. But when it comes to concrete,
abstract or even pie-in-the-sky solutions as to how to bring about change, the
left not only has none but is incensed when you ask them for any.
They say that the repairs
they suggest for their place will make things better for everybody but they
have no idea how to do them; it’s the landlord’s job to make the improvements.
And if their neighbors leave in frustration and choose to move in to a neighborhood
that says the current tenants aren’t considering them, they’ll move in more to
get away from their current neighbors.
This, just so I’m being
clear, is how democracy works when the left is in charge. They don’t want
anyone who offers anything resembling a differing opinion. So the people who
tried to accommodate them and found it impossible will listen to people more on
the right. Neither extreme really cares about the moderates wants but as we’ve
seen over the last decade, the right has an easier time winning over the
undecideds by saying the left is unreasonable.
You think I’m being crazy?
When Barry Goldwater famously said in his acceptance speech at the Republican
Convention in 1964: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” he
terrified so many moderates that they ended up voting for LBJ. The idea of extremism
was such a terrifying idea to the average citizen that they voted for a
Democrat whose morals they didn’t trust because the alternative was terrifying.
These days I feel that
Goldwater’s speech, if heard out of context, would inspire a whole generation
of young leftists who never heard of him. They think moderation isn’t a virtue
in any situation and to paraphrase Goldwater’s slogan “in their hearts, they
know they’re right.” And no matter how many people they drive away, no matter
how much their results end up making things worse for the majority of citizens,
they will never think: “it’s not them, it’s us.” Claiming your on the right side of history is
a wonderful talking point. But we all have to live in the here and now and we
have to live with people who disagree with us.
This brings me to the point
of Black’s article in which he claims he will someday leave America. I find
this hysterical. Back in 2016, every major celebrity from Bryan Cranston to
Susan Sarandon went on record multiple times that if Trump won that year, they’d
leave America. (None, for the record revealed, where they’d go if he won, but
never mind.) It’s been eight years and as far as I can tell, not one person who
claimed they would did.
Now considering that,
unlike so many of the unfortunate people they claim to be in favor of, they
have the wealth and means to emigrate to a friendlier climate, the question is
why didn’t they? The cynical answer is they are people of means and if they had
to move to one of those friendlier countries, they wouldn’t be able to take
advantage of the tax breaks that so many of them rail against on television but
I have little doubt they are all grateful for. There’s also the fact that,
while America may be the failed state they think it is, it’s highly unlikely
most of them would be able to get the kind of funding for the kind of films and
television shows they’ve made their livelihoods in. And of course, no one ever
lost money going on media and complaining how much the President is destroying
the country as they know it.
All of these are the reasons
and not the real one at the same time. See, if all of these people – in the John Galt sense of the word – decided to
just leave America, where would they go? I ask this bluntly. That dream
neighborhood they claim they’ve been looking for still doesn’t exist on any
nation on Planet Earth. If it did, they’d have all moved there by now. The
leftist utopia they have spent their life searching for couldn’t exist in
reality any more than the conservative dystopia they claim we are marching
towards. There’s no society on Earth that could check every single box they
want, and even if it did, within a few days they’d invent a new one that they
claimed it didn’t have.
That is why I am certain, despite
all his bellyaching, Black has no
intention of leaving America. Not if Trump wins in November, not in four years ,not
ever. No leftist who lives here will.
It has nothing to do with
America being more accommodating for them then other nations, or their lack of
means, or any other reason. It’s because
in their hearts that no matter where they go, it won’t be their dream
neighborhood. And why do you want to go
to another starter home when you keep doing what you really want to do? Keep
bitching that nothing works right.
And as for this generation
who wants everything but who doesn’t want to do anything for it. You get in this world exactly what you put
into it and you’ve made it repeatedly clear just what you’re willing to put in.
When you’re willing to do more than most
endless screeds on social media or consider more than a hashtag an actual
answer, we can talk. My door is always open. Of course we all know its in a
neighborhood you’ve never deem worthy of you.
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