Rubbishing 'Achievement'.

There are Heroes and Saints in this Tavern. And assorted sinners on the road away from perdition. That is what this rest-stop is for. And it takes effort. But effort and its fruits go against the grain of our modern Zozchial Zystem imposed and maintained by the Left.

People generally tried hard throughout history. Many succeeded, to the benefit of most of us and much to the chagrin of those that fell by the wayside. But the naysayers were generally dismissed by the strivers until the 'Left' came along with a fantastic policy of Envy for the Masses.

Thomas Sowell was in today chatting at the bar and having a well-earned top-up of Grace. He was 'holding forth' about achievement. He even wrote about it.

The War Against Achievement   

 Praising success would be disastrous for the Left, he said. 

http://nationalreview.com/article/364235/war-against-achievement-thomas-sowell

A friend recently sent me a link to an inspiring video about an upbeat young black man who was born without arms.  

It showed him going to work — unlike the record number of people living on government payments for “disabilities” that are far less serious, if not fictitious. 

Oz has a new 'Disability' Policy that will be of some small assistance to those in our country who are suffering with a disability, and to their 'carers', often aging parents or children 'managing' the old and infirm.

And of financial benefit to a host of charlatans 'suffering' from an overdose of alcohol and idleness. So Thom's words strike close home in more countries than just the USA.

How is this young man getting to work? He gets into his car and drives there — using controls set up so that he can operate the car with his feet.

It is Character, not hand-outs.

What kind of work does he do, and how does he do it? He is involved in the design of racing cars. He sits at his computer, looking at the screen, with the keyboard on the floor, where he uses his toes as others use their fingers. 

This is quite unlike a chap nearby in the village who sits at his doorstep, barely able to rise, drunk. Taxpayers via the Government fuel his constant state of decrepitude.

His story recalls the story of Helen Keller, who went to an elite college and on to a career, despite being born both deaf and blind. Her story was celebrated in books, in television documentaries, and in an inspiring movie, The Miracle Worker. 

But our culture has changed so much over the years that the young man with no arms is unlikely to get comparable publicity. Helen Keller’s achievement was seen as an inspiration for others,  

but this young man’s achievement is more like a threat to the prevailing ideology of our times. 

The vision on which the all-encompassing and all-controlling welfare state was built is a vision of widespread helplessness, requiring ever more expanding big government.  

Our “compassionate” statists would probably have wanted to take this young man without arms, early on, and put him in some government institution. 

But to celebrate him in the mainstream media today would undermine a whole ideological vision of the world  

— and of the vast government bureaucracies built on that vision. It might even cause people to think twice about giving money to able-bodied men who are standing on street corners, begging. 

The last thing the political Left needs, or can even afford, is self-reliant individuals.  

If such people became the norm, that would destroy not only the agenda and the careers of those on the left, but even their flattering image of themselves as saviors of the less fortunate. 

Victimhood is where it’s at.  

If there are not enough real victims, then fictitious victims must be created — as with the claim that there is “a war on women.”  

Why anyone would have an incentive or a motivation to create a war on women in the first place is just one of the questions that should be asked of those who promote this political slogan, obviously designed for the gullible. 

This particular 'war' is a fiction kept fed with ammunition by Feminism, itself an ideology that has developed such a warped view of the world and Human Beings that they are in full blown neurosis.  A created Unreality.

Its leaders of course are way out ahead in  mental illness. They are Psychotics. Dangerously so. Psychopaths love the idea of 'war'.

The real war — which is being waged in our schools, in the media, and among the intelligentsia —  

is the war on achievement.  

When President Obama told business owners, “You didn’t build that!” this was just one passing skirmish in the war on achievement. 

The very word “achievement” has been replaced by the word “privilege” in many writings of our times.  

Individuals or groups that have achieved more than others are called “privileged” individuals or groups, who are to be resented rather than emulated. 

Of course the main and decidedly undeserving 'Privileged' are White, Anglo-Saxon Men, for the quite obvious reason.

Not that 'reason' is ever brought into play by the Left and the Feminists working hand in panties. Every year we get the same old mantras about 'Pay-Gap' with absolutely no acknowledgement that men get paid more because they work harder, for longer at the more difficult, dirty and dangerous jobs.

Men working harder, longer and doing the dirty, dangerous jobs is apparently a ploy by the Patriarchy to make War on Women. Its a winner all round it seems. The harder they work, the more successful they are, much to men's satisfaction,  and that is affronting and offensive to the bone-idle part of society that the Left appeal to.

The length to which this kind of thinking — or lack of thinking — can be carried was shown in a report on various ethnic groups in Toronto. It said that people of Japanese ancestry in that city were the most “privileged” group there, because they had the highest average income. 

What made this claim of “privilege” grotesque was a history of anti-Japanese discrimination in Canada, climaxed by people of Japanese ancestry being interned during World War II longer than Japanese Americans. 

Men too are the ones that fight and die in the wars to protect the women we are supposedly making war upon !!.  The mind reels.

If the concept of achievement threatens the prevailing ideology, then real achievement in the face of obstacles is a deadly threat.  

That is why the achievements of Asians in general — and of people like the young black man with no arms — make those on the left uneasy. And why the achievements of people who created their own businesses have to be undermined by the President of the United States. 

What would happen if Americans in general, or blacks in particular, started celebrating people like this armless young man, instead of trying to make heroes out of hoodlums? Many of us would find that promising and inspiring. But it would be a political disaster for the Left — which is why it is not likely to happen.

But, who knows how long such a neurotic ideology can persist? History teaches us that it will either Hoist itself on its own Petard or the civilisation that has spawned it will collapse. Either way, it will be back to striving again.

And perhaps the Nemesis is on its way. Jonah Goldberg was also in the bar.

Obamacare Schadenfreudarama   

 It feels pretty good to watch the whole thing fail.  He said, talking of the latest Leftist fiasco in the USA.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/363907/obamacare-schadenfreudarama-jonah-goldberg

The hubris of our ocean-commanding commander-in-chief surely isn’t news to readers of this website.  

He’s said that he’s smarter and better than everyone who works for him.  

His wife informed us that he has “brought us out of the dark and into the light” and that he would fix our broken souls.  

The man defined sin itself as “being out of alignment with my values.”  

We may be the ones we’ve been waiting for, but at the same time, everyone has been waiting for him. Or as he put it in 2007, “Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama’s been there.” 

In every tale of hubris, the transgressor is eventually slapped across the face with the semi-frozen flounder of reality. The Greeks had a god, Nemesis, whose scythe performed the same function.  

It was Nemesis who lured Narcissus to the pool where he fell in love with his own reflection.  

Admittedly, most of Nemesis’s walk-on roles were in the Greek tragedies, but in the modern era, comeuppance-for-the-arrogant is more often found in comedies, and the “rollout” of Healthcare.gov has been downright hilarious.  

(I put quotation marks around “rollout” because the term implies actual rolling, and this thing has moved as gracefully as a grand piano in a peat bog.)  

But, as the president says, “it’s more than a website.”  

Indeed, the whole law is coming apart like a papier-mâché yacht in rough waters.  

The media feeding frenzy it has triggered from so many journalistic lapdogs has been both so funny and so poignant, it reminds me of nothing more than the climax of the classic film Air Bud, when the lovable basketball-playing golden retriever finally decides to maul the dog-abusing clown.

Meanwhile it is with a wry smile of anticipation - a long way ahead, mind you - that we await the downfall of the entire Leftist neurotic mindset. Before it takes the next and similarly historically-known turn... into Psychosis.

Talking of 'Smarter', I am off for a few days, taking a spot of leave from bar-keeping duties.

I am off to the other side of Oz, the Western regions where Oz Mensa is gathering to talk wildly improbable matters.

The world is puzzling. Politics and human beings in particular.

I will leave you with something to puzzle over.

Cheers. Do not pee on the carpets while I am away, but help yourself to what's behind the bar.