Today I decided to pay a visit to the local movie theater and watch Dinesh D’Souza’s new film “America, Imagine a World Without Her” and very much enjoyed myself, though I was slightly disappointed (but not surprised) by the fact that everyone else in the theater was old enough to be one of my grandparents.
In this movie, as in every film, the subjects are passed over a bit too quickly, which limits the ability to drill into the core of the meaning of the ideas that are being discussed. The main theme of the movie is centered on the premise that there is a large group of people in the United States who are ashamed of our country and our history. They have set their sights on the goal of spreading that shame into every aspect of our nation until we have collapsed due to apathy and in doing so pay our debt to the world for our transgressions.
Before we get too involved in that idea, I have a short story from my childhood to share….
Once upon a time I felt I had been unfairly treated by my parents and I told them so. Their response was was as quick as it was unoriginal.
“Life is unfair, deal with it.”
My rebuttal managed to take the prize for least original comeback, “Well, you should try to make it fairer.” I then set a goal in my life to improve fairness…luckily for all involved I soon went to sleep and woke up with a far diminished desire to combat unfairness.
This story in itself is rather unimpressive since it has been repeated between children and their parents as long as there have been teenagers. Life is inherently unfair and eventually children realize that unsettling truth….or they become Left Wing Statists intent on distributing equal portions of fairness via government mandate.
The standard parental response of “Life isn’t fair” is a perfectly true statement, even if it is rather vague. Even the child’s response of insisting that we try to make life fairer is not wrong, it is only naive.
Fairness is desirable, because blatant unfairness is a path to civic unrest. A better description from the parent would be to explain the general inability to determine fairness, even from the powerful position of parenthood. Constantly intervening in childhood affairs to ensure fairness will serve only to deprive a child developing mature relations with his peers, conditioning him to constantly look to an authority figure to resolve any dispute and cry foul whenever events are not settled as he sees fit. Part of being an adult means accepting that things are not always fair and that there isn’t much to be done to change that.
Unfortunately for society, you do not have to be an adult to make your opinions heard in public, so we must deal with the Left Wing. As D’Souza points out, most of the Left’s complaints against our country rest on the charge of unfairness. We cheated the Indians, enslaved Africans, stole land from the Mexicans and are now pillaging the world. Despite being experts in pointing out historical events of unfairness, the Left Wing seems rather inept when it comes to the difficult task of solving the problem or preventing it. Seemingly as long as we never again benefit in any way from anything we shall somewhat repay the gross injustices we have forced upon the world. I wonder how we will repay our debt to all those we injure and doom to oppression with our country’s demise?
D’Souza does point out that while the Left enjoys making an example of our historical failures, they are not very good at it or very objective. Pinning the blame of near extinction of the Native Americans solely on citizens of the USA, for example, because apparently the residents of Spain, England, Portugal and France bear no responsibility for their power hungry aggression during the period of time prior to the creation of our country. Also, in their mind slavery is purely an American invention and our enormous sacrifice in blood and treasure during the Civil War has done nothing to absolve us of our guilt. If we had not stolen the golden lands of the American southwest from the Mexicans, they would be the natural Super Power of the globe.
Repeating the idea that our national greatness was built on the backs of slaves is rather ironic since the portion of the country that derived the greatest benefit from slave labor was soundly defeated in open warfare by the portion of the country that rejected slavery as an acceptable idea. If slavery is the source of our greatness, shouldn’t the South have triumphed over the North? The belief that Mexico would be equally prosperous if they hadn’t lost the American Southwest is also a bit of the stretch. Shouldn’t controlling these amazing lands have helped Mexico defeat the US?
While writing this I feel somewhat perplexed because of my desire to so often use the word “ironic” when describing the positions of the Left Wing. It seems their entire philosophy is built around defying logical thought. While embracing fairness as central to their political agenda, they praise the idea that some distant government agent representing a parent should determine the proper level of fairness in our lives, as if elevating others to make decisions for us is somehow more fair. A more rational person would tend towards the idea that it is up to individuals to achieve an acceptable level of fairness between them and their fellow citizens, improving equality with hard work mixed with charity and kindness.
Strangely, the original fight for fairness in our country was taken up by the very founders that the Left Wing hates so much. Having migrated away from the misguided bureaucracy of hereditary monarchy our forefathers took up arms to keep the idea of centrally planned fairness from invading our shores and a few generations later took the fight even farther as they eradicated slavery from our nation.
In the end, those on the Right accept that life is unfair, but try to make the parts in our limited power as fair as possible. Those on the Left refuse to accept that unfairness will exist and dedicate themselves to defying natural law with mandates and regulations.
Categories: Blog Posts
Stovepipe Sentinel 
Leave a comment