Commentary by James Shott
Life
provides lessons for us in unusual ways. Occasionally, it is someone
totally missing something obvious that provides the lesson. Here is a
very good example of that.
A photograph posted on Facebook shows a
woman holding up a sign. The sign says: “I have a Master of Arts degree
in Women’s Studies. However, the only job I can find is as a bartender
at a local restaurant. I owe over 60k in student loans. I am forced to
rely on food stamps and WIC to support my son. Is this the ‘American
Dream’ I worked so hard for? I am the 99 percent occupywallstreet.org.”
The
lesson is there for all to see, but the woman – let’s call her “Ms.
OWS,” – not only didn’t learn from her experience, she didn’t even
suspect there was a lesson there. That experience was only an
opportunity to complain that America hasn’t provided a better life for
her.
The lesson that unless you are independently wealthy or have
someone to support you while you go to school, you don’t borrow 60 grand
to pursue a degree in a subject area that will not equip you to support
yourself and your child and pay for the education that you have just
received totally escaped her notice.
Like the make-believe class
college kids used to joke about, “Underwater Basket Weaving,” Women’s
Studies, is not a viable career field. To prepare for supporting
yourself you study accounting, engineering, computer technology, law,
medicine, chemistry, elementary or secondary education, or one of the
other majors where jobs are available. But Ms. OWS, probably without a
gun to her head, instead chose Women’s Studies.
The Occupy Wall Street movement with which Ms. OWS so closely identifies, includes some pie-in-the-sky idealism, like:
• The right to economic justice, including a living wage for all,
regardless of the job, or the level of skills or experience one has
• Debt forgiveness for all debts
• Free college education
• Open borders
These
goals are not merely unrealistic; they are dangerous. None would be
good either for the country or for its inhabitants. Someone has to pay
for the higher wages, the free college education, and the debt
forgiveness, and that won’t be the people who think about life like Ms.
OWS does; it will be the people who approach adulthood responsibly, and
prepare to take care of themselves.
Movements like Occupy Wall
Street seem to attract those disaffected souls who, for whatever reason,
have not learned what life is about, expect to be provided for, and
become indignant when life does not provide to them the rewards to which
they believe they are entitled, due to nothing more significant that
they were not aborted and draw breath.
Like Ms. OWS, they float
through life indulging in the things they like, neglecting to seek out
things that will prepare them for life as a responsible citizen, and
then contributing to society and the wellbeing of our country.
Perhaps
it’s not entirely their fault. We have a segment of our society that
imagines it is possible to achieve Utopia, and a large group of
pandering vote-seekers all too willing to promise it to them, and who
provide a few goodies at taxpayer expense in return for votes and a
cushy career in government.
And then there’s government, itself,
at all levels. Even in cases where young people show some initiative,
and take steps to help themselves, they are often thwarted by
bureaucratic absurdity, as in these examples reported by The Daily
Signal:
** Chloe Stirling started a business in her kitchen
called “Hey, Cupcake!” In addition to selling her goods to friends and
neighbors, she donated some to charitable events, including a fundraiser
for a student with cancer, and delivered cupcakes to residents in a
senior home. Not good enough! Illinois health officials declared that
she lacked the necessary permit to operate and told her to close up
shop.
** A zoning official in Holland, Mich. shut down a
13-year-old’s hotdog stand because he was supposedly competing with
nearby restaurants. Nathan Duszynski had planned to sell hotdogs to
raise money for his disabled parents. The boy’s mom has epilepsy and his
dad has multiple sclerosis. Within minutes of opening his stand, a
zoning official ordered him to cease operating because he lacked a
license.
Bah! Humbug!
Is this a great country, or what? On
the one hand there’s a substantial number of people who think they are
entitled to whatever they think they are entitled to, and lack the
motivation to get off their duffs and earn their rewards, and on the
other hand people in government stupidly apply rules to punish young
people who take the initiative to earn something through work.
But
then there was a pleasant breeze of tolerance and common sense wafting
its way north from Dunedin, Fla. where 12-year-old T.J. Guerrero
operates a lemonade stand to raise money for summer activities with his
friends and family. After one neighbor complained to the city, Mayor
Dave Eggers visited the stand, enjoyed some lemonade, and praised the
youngster’s initiative.
Perhaps all is not lost. But we must be vigilant.
Cross-posted from Observations
Commentary by James H. Shott
They once called themselves “liberals,” but as practiced
here in the U.S. through the years that word gathered lots of negative energy, casting
adherents in a bad light, so they changed their moniker and now call themselves
“progressives.”
But the term “progressives” is a misnomer, unless you
consider it progress for America to slowly abandon the freedom that was once
our hallmark, and move instead toward being more under the thumb of an increasingly
over-reaching government.
To demonstrate how off-the-mark some progressives’ thinking
is, consider the following:
On ESPN’s “Around the Horn,” a frequent guest named Kevin
Blackistone said that football games should not include the singing of the
national anthem during the pregame, calling the “Star-Spangled Banner” a “war
anthem.”
Mr. Blackistone was addressing controversy over Northwestern
University’s American flag-themed football uniforms, designed to raise money
for the Wounded Warriors Project. In the “Buy or Sell” show segment he said he
would “sell” the uniforms: “I'm going to sell it for the same reasons. If you
sell this along with me, you should also be selling the rest of the military
symbolism embrace of sports. Whether it’s the singing of a war anthem to open
every game. Whether it’s going to get a hotdog and being able to sign up for
the Army at the same time. Whether it’s the NFL's embrace of the mythology of
the Pat Tillman story. It has been going on in sports since the first national
anthem was played in the World Series back in 1917. And it’s time for people to
back away.”
Mr. Blackistone clearly is a man who neither understands nor
cares for America.
And this from Mary Margaret Penrose, a Texas A&M School
of Law professor, who expressed her frustration with the fact that President Barack
Obama has failed to pass more gun control since the crime at Sandy Hook
Elementary.
Prof. Penrose said gun laws should be decided on a per-state
basis, versus the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "The beauty of a
states' rights model solution is it allows those of you who want to live in a
state with very loose restrictions to do so." She went on to say that
her problems with the Constitution are not limited to the Second Amendment, and
advocates in her law courses redrafting the entire U.S. Constitution.
Is advocating abandoning the supreme law of the land
acceptable in helping law students learn about and understand our system of
laws?
More wisdom from the halls of academia comes from Professor
Noel Ignatiev of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, who tells his
students things like this: “If you are a white male, you don’t deserve to live.
You are a cancer, you’re a disease, white males have never contributed anything
positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites! At
least a white woman can have sex with a black man and make a brown baby but
what can a white male do? He’s good for nothing. Slavery, genocides against
aboriginal peoples and massive land confiscation, the inquisition, the
holocaust, white males are all to blame! You maintain your white male privilege
only by oppressing, discriminating against and enslaving others.” He suggests
that all white males should commit suicide.
Two thoughts arise from this; first, we should enthusiastically
applaud the professor’s recent decision to stop “teaching,” and second, since
he is a white male, ask why he is still alive and see if he will continue to be
a hypocrite, or if he will follow his own advice.
Not to be outdone in the expression of un-American ideas, The
Washington Post had its own expert academic opinion from Jonathan Zimmerman,
who professes history and education at New York University.
“Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re-election
just as citizens should be allowed to vote for — or against — him,” he wrote.
“Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves.”
The professor must have missed that part of his history education
when Congress proposed an amendment to the Constitution to limit the president
to two four-year terms, and why it did so. The 22nd Amendment was ratified in
1951, following FDR’s election to four terms, having been approved by the
legislatures of three-fourths of the states. It prevented the likely
possibility of a “president for life” evolving and creating a situation like the
one the Colonies suffered under that led to armed revolt. A “president for
life” is not unlike a monarch.
Maybe he thinks monarchy is superior to the form of government
the Founders created, the obligation of which was to guarantee basic freedoms
to the people it was created to serve. If it’s oppression he wants, there are
many countries to which he can relocate.
A major feature of progressivism is to limit the liberties
our ancestors fought and died for in the naïve hope of
creating a perfect society. Over the last century or so they have chipped away
enough of the protections and guarantees that the system doesn’t work as it was
designed to, and their solution is to continue to destroy it, rather than to restore
it.
Cross-posted from Observations
