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The Nation's Pulse
Trashing Achievements
The left vilifies high achievers to advance their own political agenda.
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 he was inventing; 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 benefitting 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 being subsidized by “the rest of us,” whether in 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 free loaders who owe still more to the government, because schools and roads are among the things that facilitate their work? According to Elizabeth Warren, because it is part of an “underlying social contract.”
Conjuring up some mythical agreement that nobody saw, much less signed, is an old ploy on 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 get you control of billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ hard-earned money, 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 in 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 15th issue of the N.Y Times. Personal responsibility, whether for achievement or failure, is a threat to the whole vision of the left, and a threat the left goes all-out to combat, using rhetoric uninhibited by reality.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 7.20.12 @ 6:14AM
As long as there are individuals and success, the state can not be the supreme being, those individuals will get respect and that will distract from the notion that big government is a neccesity.
Big government is a jealous entity seeking out and destroying anything and everything that stands in it's way.
As part of the wealth destruction scheme individual achievement must be debased and discredited also.
As long as there remains the American spirit of achievement the totalitarian minded community organizers can't take complete control and do everything they want in spite of the Constitution.
Frank Natoli| 7.20.12 @ 7:49AM
You are an optimist; I am not, and my cynicism compounds more each day. I believe we've passed the tipping point, that a critical mass of the envious mob is now the master, and this November will prove me right or wrong.
scotchieguy| 7.21.12 @ 2:22AM
Yes, it is close, but this Novemeber will decide if the moochers outnumber the productive or not--our great republic hangs by a thread, in jeopardy of being thrown into the ash-heap of history based upon the basest of instincts--envy. I think we are a good people, but it is funny how the ones who could correct this misdirection stand to lose alot themselves--the MSM. They are all doing quite well, and yet they will be punished as swiftly as the rich they pretend to hate once the productive quit pulling the cart.
Jade12| 7.21.12 @ 11:25AM
AMEN scotchieguy AMEN!
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 7.22.12 @ 7:13AM
"Through all the centuries of the worship of the mindless, whatever stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality to practice–it was only by the grace of the men who perceived that wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve will form an arch, that two and two make four, that love is not served by torture and life is not fed by destruction–only by the grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments when they caught the spark of being human."
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part 3, Ch. 1
Brookschwarzenegro | 7.22.12 @ 6:18PM
This piece is better than the articles Uncle Tom Sowell had published at AS recently, saying (but not this one) in effect:
"don't get uppity,
don't rock the boat,
Momma's gonna buy you
a molasses-ice cream float."
At any rate, an image of the Lincoln Memorial is a good career move if Tom chose it and not someone at AS.
Frank Natoli| 7.20.12 @ 7:46AM
It was, I believe, the late, great American historian Stephen Ambrose who noted that somewhere between World War I and World War II the U.S. Army somehow transitioned from a singing army to a "put down" army. Singing, together, was what men did, for centuries. Then instead they began to "put down", via clever sarcasm, anyone who stood out. It was much easier to pull someone down than raise yourself up.
This, way back in the 1920s-1930s, was a harbinger of things to come. We, as a culture, had transitioned from instinctive fellowship, in the army via singing, to uninhibited envy, in the army via the put down, and now today via the force of elected government.
We used to have moral figures who recognized that envy and called it such, but not any more.
There are a few "voices crying out from the wilderness", Mr. Sowell being one of the most extraordinary, but both when those words were originally written, and now, most of the intended audience is deaf.
Stuart Koehl| 7.20.12 @ 8:39AM
There has long been a name for this: "Tall Poppy Syndrome": In Livy's "Histories", he writes of the Roman King Lucius Tarquinus Superbus, whose son Sextus had successfully conquered the neighboring city of Gabii. Sextus sent a messenger to his father, asking what he should do with the population. The king took out his sword and began lopping off the heads of all the poppies in his flower bed that stood up above the rest.
The messenger understood, and returned to Sextus, instructing him to execute all of the most distinguished men among the Gabii.
To this day, "Tall Poppy Syndrome" describes situations in which people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements distinguish them from their peers.
TLP| 7.20.12 @ 12:26PM
In the 1930's, they were called - The Jews.
And, we all know how that turned out.
It's amazing how people never Learn.
Jade12| 7.21.12 @ 11:28AM
Exactly TLP.
Also I really like all of your posts. You are not afraid to tell it like it is even though some people don't like it.
TLP| 7.21.12 @ 9:34PM
Then, why haven't I heard more from you?
Don't be shy.
I won't bite.
Lullabys Legends and Lies| 7.20.12 @ 9:00AM
The only "underlying social contract" the Democrats believe in, is stealing, lying, and cheating, to give to the so-called poor in America, somebody else's hard earned money, in their unending attempt to gain even more power for themselves, leaving the so-called poor in the exact same state that they found them in to begin with!! You can see example after example of this, in any of the Democratically controlled States across America, wherever the Democrats run the show, taxes are high, welfare programs are growing, and the State is dying a slow death!! But they never learn from their mistakes, they keep doing them over and over again, expecting different results, but end up with even bigger problems then when they started!! That's called insanity!! If you want to see America's future, just look to Detroit, and see what's happened to that "once" great city in the last 50 years!! If we don't take control back from these freaks, there's going to be nothing to save in a just a few years, so this November, vote out the Democratic Party wherever you find them, and then pray to God in Heaven above, for a better future for us all without them!! Or don't, and watch the entire Nation go the way of the Motor City!!
TLP| 7.21.12 @ 9:36PM
Give that man a Nat Sherman Cigar.
JimH| 7.20.12 @ 10:04AM
Success, particularly success achieved under difficult circumstances gives the lie to the whole culture of victimization promulgated by the left.
JD| 7.20.12 @ 12:30PM
I'd like to address the particular lie that business owners owe society for subsidizing the education of their workers.
Why does a worker improve his education? To score a higher salary. One might say that he does it for other, more philosophical reasons, but if those reasons aren't intended to increase the employee's salary, then why would we expect them to benefit his employer financially?
No, any education that benefits the employer financially is immediately paid for by said employer in the form of the aforementioned higher salary, which is PAID BY THE EMPLOYER. The employer's "share" of the education cost is automatically paid through increased salary.
So too every other cost that Democrats say employers owe to society has already been paid, through taxes and salaries.
Far less certain is that the similar debts owed by lower class workers to the rest of society are being paid, particularly those whose salaries are inflated by political fiat, or who don't pay any taxes.
A final point: Who is the beneficiary of a particular worker's education? The employer has to pay for each improvement in education via salary. If a particular employee lacks necessary education, the employer can find a different employee. Furthermore, most employees' time with a given employer is limited.
The true beneficiary is the employee himself. His education benefits him for life, in the form of extra salary he receives. The obligation to repay public education subsidy ought to fall on HIM.
lost| 7.20.12 @ 3:01PM
Also companies that have vehicles also pay more for the roads. They do that thru gas taxes and higher registration fees. If those vehicles are DOT then they have even more fees. Anyone who thinks business is successful on the back of others stopped learning about the real world in 1st grade.
TLP| 7.21.12 @ 9:38PM
Also, they PAY THE TAXES, that ALLOW the Pompous Assed Effeminate Politicians, to do what they think we should KISS THEIR ASSES, for.
Kwan| 7.21.12 @ 9:29AM
Since January 21, 2009 the country as envisioned by the founders has been under a blitzkrieg attack launched by Marxist Utopians under the command of Reichsfuhrer Obama extolling the virtues of social justice, equality, and redistribution. One thing they forget to tell the voters is that to achieve this state of utopian wonderment we must convert the country into a Totalitarian Socialist State.
AhiaBoy| 7.22.12 @ 9:50AM
Just wondering where the usual suspects are to tell us all why success is a bad thing?
Maybe they haven't read their daily talking points yet?