I am always on a quest to understand the liberal mind. How could other wise intelligent people view the world in such a wrong manner? It baffles me.
In an effort to better understand and explain the liberal mind, I came up with the analogy below.
Imagine this...
If We Ran Our Household in The Same Way Liberals Want The Country To Be Run -- A Scenario To Consider:
A parent has twelve year old twin sons. The sons both want to buy a new bike. The bikes they want cost $300 each. The boys fear that they will not be able to save up the money to buy the bikes before the summer is over, so the parent agrees that if the kids can save up half the cost of the bike, they will match them dollar-for-dollar for the rest.
Son #1 is diligent in saving his allowance. He gets a paper route. He mows lawns around the neighborhood. He rakes leaves and does various other jobs. At the end of the summer he saves up the $150 needed to pay for half the cost of the $300 bike.
Son #2 is not as diligent. He spends his allowance on candy. He gets a paper route, but is often late and does not do as good of a job, so his tips are low. He does not bother to look for jobs around the neighborhood. At the end of the summer he is well short of his savings goal. He has saved $100.
The two boys go to their parent. Son #1 says, "Mom, I've lived up to my part of the deal. I have my $150. I'm ready to buy my bike." Son #2 says, "Mom, I think I deserve the bike. Even though I did not save up the required amount of money, I really need and want that bike."
What are the parents to do?
Most parents would buy the bike as agreed for son #1. They would then use the opportunity to teach son #2 a lesson about work ethic, sacrifice, saving, discipline, setting and obtaining goals, etc. They would tell son #2 that he has to go back and work for the the final $50 then he too would get the bike. That's generally what a good, logical-thinking, loving parent would do.
But what would the liberal parent do?
The liberal parent would think, "It's not fair to son #2 that son #1 is such an achiever". Applying to parenting the same liberal policies that liberals want to apply to our government, the parent would then take $25 from son #1, give it to son #2 so they would both have $125. They would then buy each of them a $250 dollar bike.
Moral of The Story:
You can see from this example how the liberal policy brought down the entire standard. Both boys were forced to accept an inferior $250 dollar bike, rather than applying a little extra work and discipline to son #2 to allow both of them to get the $300 bike.
If, as a parent, you truly believe that the latter way (the liberal way) of handling this scenario is superior to the first method, I have nothing more for you. I can not ever hope to understand you. If that is your belief, I can no longer consider your liberalism to be just a difference of political outlook, but more of a mental illness. However, I suspect that most parents, even politically liberal parents, would have handled this scenario closer to as I first described. They would agree that my first solution makes more sense. If that's true, why then does this not carry over to politics? Why do liberals believe in burdening achievers with the dead weight of non-achievers? Is this a collision of logic versus emotion?
Liberals: Please weigh in!
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9 comments:
For a discussion on "the real difference between liberals and conservatives", you might want to take a look at this video of Jonathan Haidt:
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.
I watched the entire 18+ minute video. This guy is clearly a liberal. His speech clearly has a liberal slant. I don't even think he's trying to hide that. So, we got a liberal, talking to an audience filled with liberals, and I'm supposed to trust his analysis of conservatives?
Clearly he has some interesting points, and a decent presentation, but I'm suspicious. I don’t know a lot about him or about TED.
Conservatives have to put up with getting our news with a liberal slant. Conservatives have to be wary of the left slant on every newspaper, magazine, television show, and movie. Would it be too much to ask to have at least our science and research come from a non-biased source?
I certainly am not shy about giving my opinion on liberalism, but I'm not passing my rantings off as scientific research.
I’m not saying anything this guy is talking about is wrong or bad. I’m just not sure that we (collectively) should be relying on a clear liberal for “scientific” research of conservatives.
Here's another equally simplistic and false analogy. Something a bit closer to the truth is this: The oldest kid is the biological child and the youngest is the red-headed adopted kid. The eldest wants a Mercedes while the much younger wants a skateboard. The parents pay the car insurance, pay for law school and give him 95% towards buy the car. The red-headed kid is told to go rake leaves to buy his skateboard but isn't allowed to skip chores. The family falls on tough times due to the financial crisis and they need some cash to donate to the megachurch pastor for some divine intervention and breast implants for the mom. Which kid do they take the money from?
Frank,
Uhhhh, I don't get it.
Help me out here.
Sorry to be obtuse. The first post is trying to equate the taxpayers to the two boys, each wanting a bike. One kid work hard for it while the other goofs off. In the end, to be "fair" both get an inferior bike.
The point I was tried to illustrate is that the boys start at different levels of privilege, simply due to birth order. The special perks percolate through the offspring of the favored child while the unfavored child has too many hurdles to ever hope compete. In my analogy, the kid who wants the Mercedes should settle for a Ford so that the other kid can buy the skateboard. Any better?
Frank,
I would agree that not everyone is born to the same circumstances. I wanted to be the son of a Kennedy, but my father was a plumber. That's a fact of life that will never change. However, is it really the responsiblity of government to make up for that gap?
Also, the thing you fail to understand is that circumstances only make up a small portion of the equation. Many, many, many people that are in the "lower" circumstances are there not because of some sort of celestial bad luck, but because of choices they've made throughout their lives. Maybe instead of studying they chose to go party. Maybe they made choices to spend their money on a new motorcycle instead of saving for college. Maybe they chose to do drugs instead of staying clean. Those are all bad choices. Maybe they even took "good" risks and failed, like for example, instead of going to college they took a swing at starting a business that failed. Even in that case, the person took that chance being fully aware of the risks.
Is government really supposed to bail out all these people? Are YOU and I supposed to be responsible for bailing out these people?
Like your mother told you: LIFE'S NOT FAIR! Deal with it.
I know I'll get labled "uncompassionate" for my previous post.
Quite the opposite.
Hand outs are not the same as ensuring a fair playing field.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish....
Jay,
I never asked to be the son of a printer, who after 30 years on the job the businessmen shut the whole place down so they could move the company down south and pay workers 8 bucks an hour instead of 15/hour. Through work and scholarships I was able to not only be the first in the family to graduate from college but also complete a PhD in molecular genetics. However, the costs for college has reached the point that I cannot send my more qualified children to the same school. It is unlikely we could ever save enough/work extra to pay for college, short of living in a cardboard box instead of a rather modest house. Why is this? Because US society values businessmen more than it values scientists and it is reflected in my paycheck.
I cannot tell from your post whether you are trying to make a connection to:
the financial bailout (mixed feeling about this, huge opportunity for abuse)
Obamas plan for tax increases >$250 k (I favor this)
Plans on bailing out homeowners (mixed feelings, credit was way too easy and some stupid people got taken advantage of).
"Life's not fair" can be applied to rich people as well. Surely, the wealthy can take one (probably their first) for the team. Besides, if they follow their own advice, work hard and make the right choices, they will soon be back on top. Isn't *that* what they tell the poor?
Frank,
OK, so get to your point. What do you want?
Do you want "the rich" to pay for your kid's college education? Is that it? Or, do you just want EVERYONE to pay for your kid’s college education? Enlighten me.
Is that really what you're looking for here? A handout?
C'mon Frank. You're an achiever. Don't degrade yourself to the level of a common street beggar. Stop whining about what others have and you don't have.
Frank, based on the quick story of your life that you told me, I believe you know what needs to be done. Your kids need to do one thing: PERSERVERE. It's what you did, and it's what your parents did.
Frank, grab hold of your own destiny. Don't wait for "the government" to solve your problems. C'mon, you're a big boy Frank.
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