Last Thursday, the New York City Board of Health passed a rule banning the sale of large soft drinks in delis, movie theaters, and restaurants. The move was made in response to the growing girth of the citizens of that city. Establishments that feature self serve drink fountains would be prohibited from providing cups larger than 16 ounces. Other measures in the rule deal with the complicated issues such as chocolate milk and energy drinks. The rule was fought by businesses on the grounds that the banning of "super size" soda pop and other sugar laden beverages would cut into profits. A compromise was reached in which calories, ingredients, and nutritional content were juggled so as to allow some popular drinks like chocolate milk though the cracks.
It is remarkable that the city felt obliged to take up the task of involving itself in the diets of its citizens. Education has failed to curb the appetites of New Yorkers. Public service campaigns have failed. The omnipresence of sleek ads featuring thin, attractive models has failed to shame and entice New Yorkers into losing weight. Parents have failed to shape the dietary habits of their children in a suitably healthy manner. Progressives are at their wits end. The next best step is to intervene by limiting the options available to the consumer. Since people have demonstrated too great a willingness to eat what is put in front of them, steps have to be taken to limit what can be put in front of them. To that end, progressives are at work chiseling down the dietary options available to consumers.
The free market is based on supply and demand. People want super size meals, giant drinks, big, greasy cheeseburgers, and six inch thick pastrami sandwiches. That is why is why businesses sell them. People like sugar, salt, and fat in their food because it makes food taste good. The demand for a thing creates a supply. But the government has so far failed in curbing the demand for high calorie, fat laden food in amounts far greater than is needed to support life. They always will. Eating food you like in the amount you want is part of human nature. It has been a goal of humans since they first left the cave.
Most Americans are able to limit their appetites to what is, if not beneficial, is at least not harmful to their health. But a trip to the mall or the grocery store reveals that a great many haven't. What can be done about them? The growing mountain of data concerning the rate and economic costs of obesity is a gilded invitation for progressives to intervene. When data demonstrates that there is correlation between the activity of individuals, regardless of whether it occurs in public or in private, and the functioning of the community, the government has an obligation to step in. This is because for the progressive, whether liberal or conservative, there is no distinction between the public and the political. If it can be demonstrated that a particular activity or behavior has consequences extending beyond the individual, society has a duty to involve itself lest that activity or behavior disturb the public weal. Naturally, the particulars vary according to individual sentiment, but there is a common thread. The public must be protected from private heresy because private heresy, if left unchecked, can undermine society.
Ideally, the public can be educated into the idea. Thin is good. Obese is bad. These foods will keep you thin. Those foods will make you fat. Where education fails, the public must be prodded and enticed. Obese people are shamed and mocked. Thin people are celebrated and held up for emulation. Where prodding fails, coercion must be used. People must be forbidden to tread the path that leads to obesity. But they cannot be left to themselves to follow the path to fitness and health. People must be shepherded down that path and, to ease the task, the path must be narrowed and straightened and the exits closed.
When you go to a zoo you cannot help but notice the signs telling visitors not to feed the animals. This is because the animals all have regulated diets created to maintain their health. If people are free to toss in whatever food they please, the animals will either neglect the food the staff provides them in favor of the french fries and hot dogs people will throw, or they will eat everything. Either way, the animal's health will suffer. The animal is incapable of distinguishing between what is healthy for it to eat and what is not. It does not know how much it should eat. If you throw donuts and carrots in the monkey cage, the monkeys will eat the donuts. They will eat what tastes good. Progressives believe that people are little better. They believe that if you put foot long hot dogs in front of Americans, Americans will eat foot long hot dogs. That is why action is needed to restrict what can be put in front of them. Despite the frequent paeans to the rights and dignity of the individual, progressives do not believe that people can be trusted to conduct themselves appropriately on their own. They must be vigilantly watched, clearly guided, and constantly goaded lest they slip into barbarism and ignorance, or, in this case, obesity.
People are not animals. They can choose what they will eat and in what amount. If liberty is to mean anything you have to allow people to choose how they will conduct themselves. Just because people make poor decisions is no reason to restrict liberty. A progressive paradise would be a strange thing to behold. You would be free to marry whomever you wanted but you would not be free to eat whatever you wanted.
Don't let all the details and statistics fool you. It is really a simple plan. If the only thing Americans can eat is healthy food in modest amounts, the only thing they will eat is healthy food in modest amounts. For progressives, if people are unwilling or unable to make the right decision when confronted with multiple options, you have to narrow the list down to only those choices you approve of. They believe life should be reduced to a multiple choice test where all the wrong answers have been removed. Progressives have a plan for what America should be. One way or another, people will have to adhere to that plan.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
The Edge of Reason
On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Art Kosilek, a convicted murderer serving a life term in Massachusetts, was entitled to receive gender realignment surgery at the tax payers' expense. Koselik believes he is a woman in a man's body and to compel him to remain in that body constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It was asserted that the surgery was the only way Koslek's condition can be treated. To deny him gender realignment surgery deemed necessary to his mental well being is to deny him his right to health care. Despite the fact that Kosilek is still biologically and physiologically a man, the court sought fit to refer to him as a woman. The decision was hailed as a great step forward on behalf of transgendered people everywhere.
The trouble with the ruling is that Mark Kosilek is not being denied health care. If Koselik falls ill or is injured he has full access to the same health care every other prisoner is entitled to. What Kosilek is being denied is a sex change operation at taxpayers' expense. But feeling you are living in the wrong body is not a medical condition. It does not hinder your mobility. It does not cause physical pain. It does not threaten your health. It is not fatal if left untreated. Believing you are living in the wrong body is not a physical malady. It is a psychological condition.
It is increasingly common for people to seek medical treatment to attempt to address their dissatisfaction with their appearance. Many, if not most, Americans have something about themselves that they are unhappy with. They believe they are too short. They are losing their hair. They have stretch marks. They are overweight. They have bandy legs. There is something out there for almost everybody. Indeed, if movie stars like Angelina Jolie can be dissatisfied with their appearance to the point of getting surgery, anyone can. For some people, dissatisfaction evolves into preoccupation. Preoccupation can lead to anxiety, even obsession. However, if that obsession becomes so occluded so as to prevent a person from functioning normally, it is psychological issue, not a medical one.
With the advancements in surgery and treatment, many conditions that had to be endured in the past can now be treated. By and large, this is a good thing. Why endure the pain and physical restrictions of a damaged knee if you can solve that problem through surgery? Why suffer physical deformity if that deformity can be corrected or compensated for? There is no reason to.
Some deformities and injuries are so severe they can fairly be described as requiring medical treatment even if there is no jeopardy to a person's health. Decency and compassion require us to provide a remedy to those who have lost facial features if a remedy is available, even if the law doesn't. None of those factors apply to Robert Kosilek. He is healthy. He suffers no deformity. His mobility is not limited. He is in no physical pain. His appearance and genitalia are a source of anxiety to him alone.
Despite the cries of activists, Kosilek is not being denied health care. No transgendered person is. If they are sick or injured they have access to the same care that everyone else has. If Kosilek requires medical attention he will be provided with it, just as any other prisoner would. The court in Massachusetts veered onto a new path when it agreed that the only way to treat Koselik's disorder is through surgery. The ruling was predicated on the idea that Koselik's disorder did not require psychological treatment, but medical treatment.
The lack of equilibrium between Koselik's vision of himself and reality is the source of his psychological turmoil, not his gender. It is becoming more and more common in instances where a person's view of themselves and the world they live in is in conflict with reality, for progressives to insist that reality that yield. This is a futile endeavor. Reality yields to no one. In Koselik's case, he finds himself in conflict with nature. He is biologically a man. No court or law can change that. The only thing that can be changed is his appearance. Transgendered people can get surgery to change the way their body appears but that appearance will be a deception. Surgery can no more make a man a woman than it can make a duck into a goose.
Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality lamented that in our society "transgender people are... denied health care access all the time." She is wrong. They are not. They have access to the same health care that everyone else has. Evidently, she is aware of the precarious nature of her assertion because she went on to add that at the bottom, transgendered people are victims of "insufficient training, insufficient competency, and insufficient humanity". Deficiencies in training and competency are easily accounted for. They can be addressed through legislation. But "insufficient humanity" is another thing entirely. That is the key. If society's treatment of transgendered people is really going to change it has to be through getting at the roots of the matter. You have to change society. To change society, you have to change the way people think.
When progressives speak of changing society, they usually mean that the government should change society. That is why there is continual insistence that politicians be leaders possessed of great visions of what the country should be like. But the thought of great leaders setting out to change the way people think should be abhorrent to Americans. The thought of courts changing the way people think should be abhorrent as well. It is the ideologue that sets out to change the world. It was Marx who sought to raise men to their true potential through transforming political and economic conditions to realize his vision of what the world should look like. The thought of remaking society in accordance with some plan has frequently been the cause for great barbarism and cruelty. It contains within it the idea that society can and must be molded if it is to come into its full and proper condition. If people resist progress, they must be prodded. When prodding fails, force must be used.
It is the mark of the ideologue that, when their vision of the world is in conflict with the world in which they live, it is the world that must yield and, that when their vision of what mankind should be is in conflict with mankind as it exists, then mankind must be brought into line. It is the idea that is paramount. It is the idea that is the measure of society. Society is merely the form the idea takes when it realizes itself in existence.Men can either cooperate with the idea or they can resist it. They cannot in anyway alter its nature. When the idea is on conflict with reality, people, being the stubborn thing that they they are, must to change. They must be educated into the idea. When "education" fails in the task, legislation is relied upon. If legislation fails, coercion is used. One way or another, the ideologue will endeavor to mold mankind to fit the idea.
"There are still people who believe that being a transgendered person is a choice, or exotic or bad" said Keisling. For those at the cutting edge of human progress, too many people are thinking incorrectly. For people like Keisling, society has a duty to change the way people think. If that doesn't give you pause, nothing will. Transgendered people like Koselik are biologically and physiologically male. The only place they are female is in their mind. They want to reshape their physiology reflect the image they carry of themselves. The problem in the case of transgendered people is that gender is a biological distinction, not a psychic state. To call Koselik a woman is to subsume reality to feeling. Koselik's feelings about himself cannot change his gender. The most that can be accomplished is that Koselik will look like a woman. He will never be a woman. All the surgery and hormones in the world will not change that. Nevertheless, it is asserted that society is obliged to conform itself to the feelings of the individual. There was a time when one of the chief goals of psychotherapy was to adjust a person's psyche in order to bring him into harmony with reality. But that was when reality was believed to have a stable existence outside the human mind. Those days are gone.
There are those who argue that every newly discovered right is merely the logical extension of the one that went before it. It is argued that because A equals B, it must equal C as well. They are willing to follow this chain forever to wherever it leads, even if it leads to the absurd. To say that society is obliged to accommodate the personal feelings and emotions of its members and provide remedy to their psychic angst is to embark on a journey with no destination.
But let's be honest here. To force Koselik to serve his term with the genitalia he was born with is neither cruel or unusual. Koselik is not being denied health care. The issue of whether Koselik's is entitled to gender surgery is not about him at all. It is about sending a message. It is about the state bestowing its imprimatur on transgendered people and giving them their place in the pantheon being built to "diversity".
It was recently reported that Voyager 1 is approaching the edge of the solar system. It will soon escape the influence of the Sun's gravity and enter the void of interstellar space. Like Voyager, we are approaching the frontier of human reason. Once we pass through we will find ourselves in the void of desire, free from the gravity of tradition and history. It will be an endless wandering with no destination, propelled by emotion.
The trouble with the ruling is that Mark Kosilek is not being denied health care. If Koselik falls ill or is injured he has full access to the same health care every other prisoner is entitled to. What Kosilek is being denied is a sex change operation at taxpayers' expense. But feeling you are living in the wrong body is not a medical condition. It does not hinder your mobility. It does not cause physical pain. It does not threaten your health. It is not fatal if left untreated. Believing you are living in the wrong body is not a physical malady. It is a psychological condition.
It is increasingly common for people to seek medical treatment to attempt to address their dissatisfaction with their appearance. Many, if not most, Americans have something about themselves that they are unhappy with. They believe they are too short. They are losing their hair. They have stretch marks. They are overweight. They have bandy legs. There is something out there for almost everybody. Indeed, if movie stars like Angelina Jolie can be dissatisfied with their appearance to the point of getting surgery, anyone can. For some people, dissatisfaction evolves into preoccupation. Preoccupation can lead to anxiety, even obsession. However, if that obsession becomes so occluded so as to prevent a person from functioning normally, it is psychological issue, not a medical one.
With the advancements in surgery and treatment, many conditions that had to be endured in the past can now be treated. By and large, this is a good thing. Why endure the pain and physical restrictions of a damaged knee if you can solve that problem through surgery? Why suffer physical deformity if that deformity can be corrected or compensated for? There is no reason to.
Some deformities and injuries are so severe they can fairly be described as requiring medical treatment even if there is no jeopardy to a person's health. Decency and compassion require us to provide a remedy to those who have lost facial features if a remedy is available, even if the law doesn't. None of those factors apply to Robert Kosilek. He is healthy. He suffers no deformity. His mobility is not limited. He is in no physical pain. His appearance and genitalia are a source of anxiety to him alone.
Despite the cries of activists, Kosilek is not being denied health care. No transgendered person is. If they are sick or injured they have access to the same care that everyone else has. If Kosilek requires medical attention he will be provided with it, just as any other prisoner would. The court in Massachusetts veered onto a new path when it agreed that the only way to treat Koselik's disorder is through surgery. The ruling was predicated on the idea that Koselik's disorder did not require psychological treatment, but medical treatment.
The lack of equilibrium between Koselik's vision of himself and reality is the source of his psychological turmoil, not his gender. It is becoming more and more common in instances where a person's view of themselves and the world they live in is in conflict with reality, for progressives to insist that reality that yield. This is a futile endeavor. Reality yields to no one. In Koselik's case, he finds himself in conflict with nature. He is biologically a man. No court or law can change that. The only thing that can be changed is his appearance. Transgendered people can get surgery to change the way their body appears but that appearance will be a deception. Surgery can no more make a man a woman than it can make a duck into a goose.
Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality lamented that in our society "transgender people are... denied health care access all the time." She is wrong. They are not. They have access to the same health care that everyone else has. Evidently, she is aware of the precarious nature of her assertion because she went on to add that at the bottom, transgendered people are victims of "insufficient training, insufficient competency, and insufficient humanity". Deficiencies in training and competency are easily accounted for. They can be addressed through legislation. But "insufficient humanity" is another thing entirely. That is the key. If society's treatment of transgendered people is really going to change it has to be through getting at the roots of the matter. You have to change society. To change society, you have to change the way people think.
When progressives speak of changing society, they usually mean that the government should change society. That is why there is continual insistence that politicians be leaders possessed of great visions of what the country should be like. But the thought of great leaders setting out to change the way people think should be abhorrent to Americans. The thought of courts changing the way people think should be abhorrent as well. It is the ideologue that sets out to change the world. It was Marx who sought to raise men to their true potential through transforming political and economic conditions to realize his vision of what the world should look like. The thought of remaking society in accordance with some plan has frequently been the cause for great barbarism and cruelty. It contains within it the idea that society can and must be molded if it is to come into its full and proper condition. If people resist progress, they must be prodded. When prodding fails, force must be used.
It is the mark of the ideologue that, when their vision of the world is in conflict with the world in which they live, it is the world that must yield and, that when their vision of what mankind should be is in conflict with mankind as it exists, then mankind must be brought into line. It is the idea that is paramount. It is the idea that is the measure of society. Society is merely the form the idea takes when it realizes itself in existence.Men can either cooperate with the idea or they can resist it. They cannot in anyway alter its nature. When the idea is on conflict with reality, people, being the stubborn thing that they they are, must to change. They must be educated into the idea. When "education" fails in the task, legislation is relied upon. If legislation fails, coercion is used. One way or another, the ideologue will endeavor to mold mankind to fit the idea.
"There are still people who believe that being a transgendered person is a choice, or exotic or bad" said Keisling. For those at the cutting edge of human progress, too many people are thinking incorrectly. For people like Keisling, society has a duty to change the way people think. If that doesn't give you pause, nothing will. Transgendered people like Koselik are biologically and physiologically male. The only place they are female is in their mind. They want to reshape their physiology reflect the image they carry of themselves. The problem in the case of transgendered people is that gender is a biological distinction, not a psychic state. To call Koselik a woman is to subsume reality to feeling. Koselik's feelings about himself cannot change his gender. The most that can be accomplished is that Koselik will look like a woman. He will never be a woman. All the surgery and hormones in the world will not change that. Nevertheless, it is asserted that society is obliged to conform itself to the feelings of the individual. There was a time when one of the chief goals of psychotherapy was to adjust a person's psyche in order to bring him into harmony with reality. But that was when reality was believed to have a stable existence outside the human mind. Those days are gone.
There are those who argue that every newly discovered right is merely the logical extension of the one that went before it. It is argued that because A equals B, it must equal C as well. They are willing to follow this chain forever to wherever it leads, even if it leads to the absurd. To say that society is obliged to accommodate the personal feelings and emotions of its members and provide remedy to their psychic angst is to embark on a journey with no destination.
But let's be honest here. To force Koselik to serve his term with the genitalia he was born with is neither cruel or unusual. Koselik is not being denied health care. The issue of whether Koselik's is entitled to gender surgery is not about him at all. It is about sending a message. It is about the state bestowing its imprimatur on transgendered people and giving them their place in the pantheon being built to "diversity".
It was recently reported that Voyager 1 is approaching the edge of the solar system. It will soon escape the influence of the Sun's gravity and enter the void of interstellar space. Like Voyager, we are approaching the frontier of human reason. Once we pass through we will find ourselves in the void of desire, free from the gravity of tradition and history. It will be an endless wandering with no destination, propelled by emotion.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
1,000 Mice Do Not Make an Elephant
Charles Blow, a columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote an editorial about the dismal plight of America's children. He cited a report issued by the Center for American Progress that reveals, among other things, that over half of the post secondary students in the U.S. drop out before graduating, that more than 20% of America's children live in poverty, and that half of the children in the U.S. receive no early childhood education. Nearly a quarter live in poverty. More than a quarter have chronic health conditions. (Many of them are just plain fat). No one expects the situation to improve significantly any tome soon
Against these statistics, Blow places the impressive statistics of other nations. China, for example, is expected to have over 200 million college graduates by 2030 (the current population of the U.S. is 314 million). Many will have degrees is useful fields such as science and engineering. To rectify the deteriorating in the U.S., Blow, like many others proposes that Washington take matters into hand.
China is a centralized state. Policy is decided by the central government and imposed on the nation. If the government in Beijing decides that the nation needs more engineers, the order goes out to the education system to produce more engineers. If Beijing decides that it needs more scientists, the order goes out to produce more scientists. The U.S. is not yet a centralized state. The economy moves to its own rhythm. If there is a shortage of engineers, the demand for them rises. When the demand for engineers rises, the rewards for becoming an engineer increase. When the rewards increase, students gravitate towards becoming engineers. If there is a glut of engineering graduates, the benefits of an engineering degree decrease and students will find another field. That is how things have always worked in the U.S. It has worked well enough for the U.S. to become the premier scientific, technological, and economic power in the world. But, if statistics are any guide, we are losing our edge. Something has changed. For those like Blow, what has changed is that there is a lack of focus on the part of the U.S. that can only be rectified by action in Washington.
Like with so many other issues, the cure for what ails America is government. The trick is to make an issue a matter of national concern. Once an issue becomes a national concern, Washington can step in. But how do you make an issue like high school education a matter of national concern? Through statistics, that's how. It is through statistics that all the nation's overweight children can be put into one basket and thereby become a single, national issue warranting intervention from Washington. It is through statistics that Blow and others determine that the physical, economic, and scientific deterioration evident in the nation's educational system are a national concern.
Children in the U.S. do not belong to the nation. They belong to parents. It is the parents' responsibility to raise their children, not the nation's. Something has changed in America over the last 50 years. The well earned victories of the Civil Rights and environmental movements have imbued progressives with a sense of omnipotence. They believe that there is no problem that cannot be rectified through the proper application of federal compulsion and enticement. They believe that people are fundamentally plastic and can be shaped into desired form through the proper application of government. And, despite the rhetoric of "systems" and the nation, we are talking about people: hundreds of million of people each with their own tastes, habits, plans, and ambitions.
Like all human endeavors, at the foundation of any system is people. The fundamental flaw of Marxism was that it believed that people were products of society. It asserted that if you changed the system you can change people. Marxism failed because it was mistaken. Society is the product of people. Progressives have sought to turn Marxism on its head by trying change people. They believe that if they change how people think and behave they can change the world. In that they are correct. Where they err is that they take the same road that led the Soviet Union to ruin. They believe that to change people you have to manipulate society, but not through a frontal assault as Marx advocated. You have to tease it towards perfection with legislation carefully crafted to channel people onto the desired path. Instead of the iron gauntlet of law, the velvet glove of regulation and economic manipulation is used. Progressives seek to change the nation's children and mold them into economically useful little engines capable of driving America forward. Children are to be subordinated to the needs of the nation, whatever those needs happen to be at the moment. We console ourselves in this endeavor by contemplating to all the marvelous rewards awaiting our children when they receive the fruits of their labor.
Statistics provide only the barest of sketches of groups acting according to identifiable patterns. When a correlation is discerned it is leaped upon and shaped into a tool to with which to manipulate society with. They are outlines superimposed on hundreds of millions of individuals. People all want more and better. People all want to avoid deprivation and hardship. But that is about all you can say about them. They cannot tell you what they want more of except in vague and often meaningless terms like "equality","justice", and a "good life". Such terms are empty brackets to be filled by individuals themselves. They cannot measure the ability or tell you the personal motivations that drive the individual. They measure patterns, not causality. Indeed, to assert a causality as the basis of human behavior is the hallmark of ideology.
The raising of a child is a parent's responsibility. Clearly, too many parents in the U.S. are doing a poor job. Progressives, liberal and conservative alike, want to push parents aside and have the government take up the burden. They are forever tinkering with rules, penalties, incentives, regulations, and laws in an effort to remake people in a fashion suitable to their idea of what society should look like. For over forty years they have been laboring at this task and achieved little. Still they persist. Just as the New Deal has become the paradigm of government intervention, civil rights laws have become the paradigm of social and cultural manipulation. But, like the New Deal, the equation is far more complex. There is no simple cause and effect when it comes to human behavior. People can be stubborn, irrational, lazy, and riddled with vice. No government will ever change that because government is a product of society and society is a product of people.
As the U.S. slowly slouches toward Babylon and a debt ridden, impoverished, poorly educated, two tiered society, people are increasingly clamoring that the government do something about it. But the government has already done something about it. It has made things worse. As Samuel Johnson once said, a thousand mice do not make an elephant. Progressives cannot craft policy for 300 million mice. They need elephants. To that end they are continually stacking mice.
Against these statistics, Blow places the impressive statistics of other nations. China, for example, is expected to have over 200 million college graduates by 2030 (the current population of the U.S. is 314 million). Many will have degrees is useful fields such as science and engineering. To rectify the deteriorating in the U.S., Blow, like many others proposes that Washington take matters into hand.
China is a centralized state. Policy is decided by the central government and imposed on the nation. If the government in Beijing decides that the nation needs more engineers, the order goes out to the education system to produce more engineers. If Beijing decides that it needs more scientists, the order goes out to produce more scientists. The U.S. is not yet a centralized state. The economy moves to its own rhythm. If there is a shortage of engineers, the demand for them rises. When the demand for engineers rises, the rewards for becoming an engineer increase. When the rewards increase, students gravitate towards becoming engineers. If there is a glut of engineering graduates, the benefits of an engineering degree decrease and students will find another field. That is how things have always worked in the U.S. It has worked well enough for the U.S. to become the premier scientific, technological, and economic power in the world. But, if statistics are any guide, we are losing our edge. Something has changed. For those like Blow, what has changed is that there is a lack of focus on the part of the U.S. that can only be rectified by action in Washington.
Like with so many other issues, the cure for what ails America is government. The trick is to make an issue a matter of national concern. Once an issue becomes a national concern, Washington can step in. But how do you make an issue like high school education a matter of national concern? Through statistics, that's how. It is through statistics that all the nation's overweight children can be put into one basket and thereby become a single, national issue warranting intervention from Washington. It is through statistics that Blow and others determine that the physical, economic, and scientific deterioration evident in the nation's educational system are a national concern.
Children in the U.S. do not belong to the nation. They belong to parents. It is the parents' responsibility to raise their children, not the nation's. Something has changed in America over the last 50 years. The well earned victories of the Civil Rights and environmental movements have imbued progressives with a sense of omnipotence. They believe that there is no problem that cannot be rectified through the proper application of federal compulsion and enticement. They believe that people are fundamentally plastic and can be shaped into desired form through the proper application of government. And, despite the rhetoric of "systems" and the nation, we are talking about people: hundreds of million of people each with their own tastes, habits, plans, and ambitions.
Like all human endeavors, at the foundation of any system is people. The fundamental flaw of Marxism was that it believed that people were products of society. It asserted that if you changed the system you can change people. Marxism failed because it was mistaken. Society is the product of people. Progressives have sought to turn Marxism on its head by trying change people. They believe that if they change how people think and behave they can change the world. In that they are correct. Where they err is that they take the same road that led the Soviet Union to ruin. They believe that to change people you have to manipulate society, but not through a frontal assault as Marx advocated. You have to tease it towards perfection with legislation carefully crafted to channel people onto the desired path. Instead of the iron gauntlet of law, the velvet glove of regulation and economic manipulation is used. Progressives seek to change the nation's children and mold them into economically useful little engines capable of driving America forward. Children are to be subordinated to the needs of the nation, whatever those needs happen to be at the moment. We console ourselves in this endeavor by contemplating to all the marvelous rewards awaiting our children when they receive the fruits of their labor.
Statistics provide only the barest of sketches of groups acting according to identifiable patterns. When a correlation is discerned it is leaped upon and shaped into a tool to with which to manipulate society with. They are outlines superimposed on hundreds of millions of individuals. People all want more and better. People all want to avoid deprivation and hardship. But that is about all you can say about them. They cannot tell you what they want more of except in vague and often meaningless terms like "equality","justice", and a "good life". Such terms are empty brackets to be filled by individuals themselves. They cannot measure the ability or tell you the personal motivations that drive the individual. They measure patterns, not causality. Indeed, to assert a causality as the basis of human behavior is the hallmark of ideology.
The raising of a child is a parent's responsibility. Clearly, too many parents in the U.S. are doing a poor job. Progressives, liberal and conservative alike, want to push parents aside and have the government take up the burden. They are forever tinkering with rules, penalties, incentives, regulations, and laws in an effort to remake people in a fashion suitable to their idea of what society should look like. For over forty years they have been laboring at this task and achieved little. Still they persist. Just as the New Deal has become the paradigm of government intervention, civil rights laws have become the paradigm of social and cultural manipulation. But, like the New Deal, the equation is far more complex. There is no simple cause and effect when it comes to human behavior. People can be stubborn, irrational, lazy, and riddled with vice. No government will ever change that because government is a product of society and society is a product of people.
As the U.S. slowly slouches toward Babylon and a debt ridden, impoverished, poorly educated, two tiered society, people are increasingly clamoring that the government do something about it. But the government has already done something about it. It has made things worse. As Samuel Johnson once said, a thousand mice do not make an elephant. Progressives cannot craft policy for 300 million mice. They need elephants. To that end they are continually stacking mice.
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