GUILT, AGENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY
The Left Lets Adults Off the Hook
My parents were careful to slowly instill an awareness of my responsibility at an early age. I was responsible for my own behavior and actions, and how they affected other people. In first grade, I lost a beloved wrist wallet at school. At the time, I wasn’t confident of my ability to find my way home from school, but if I stayed to look through the lost and found, I would miss the chance to follow others back to my neighborhood. Still, my mother told me, “If you want your wallet, you have to look for it.” I learned that I was capable of finding my way home, asking for help, and yes, I found my little heart-shaped wallet.
As time went on, I learned more about what we all owe to our friends, family and a civil society. I also learned that some people began to be told they had no such obligation. First, the excuse was that they had a bad childhood. But now, simply being born to a disadvantaged race, no matter what your actual situation was, allowed you to be cut enormous slack. You could rob or kill people; that’s okay, as long as you had an excuse.
Agency means that you, as an adult, are aware of what you are doing and take responsibility for it. That’s actually what being adult means. But as part of the plantation mentality that the Left is trying to instill in increasing numbers of populations, the idea is that you are no more than a dumb animal and thus, cannot be help accountable, no matter what awful thing you do. All pet owners know that we have to cut our pets some slack, no matter what awful things they do (including chewing off most of the straps from every pair of shoes I owned – thank you, Holly), even as we know that in many cases, they knew what they were doing and chose it anyway.
BLM didn’t have agency, according to the Left, when they burned down cities, robbed stores and wounded or killed people. But the January 6th protestors did; and they are being over-prosecuted even as the “crimes” they committed were far less serious and life-impacting than the BLM rioters caused. Isn’t that interesting? We hold Caucasians up as the adults in the room, while we infantilize nearly everyone else. Sorry – we are also assuming Jews/Israelis are the adults, while terrorist groups are babies who don’t understand that it’s not okay to roast a baby while raping its mother.
What an insult! Just as affirmative action largely held that minorities weren’t capable of the work Whites could do and needed to be given better grades and entrance to schools they weren’t necessarily qualified for, the new rule is that you can’t blame “disadvantaged” groups for crimes. Isn’t that racist? Why aren’t these groups outraged at being cast as “less than?”
Failed at life? Not your fault. Unable to hold down a job; it’s whitey’s fault. Can’t keep from robbing stores or houses? No worries. You really have a right to the things other people worked hard for. Struggling in school? No, we won’t help you learn, but we’ll give you an A anyway.
Not only is this insulting to the groups being held to such a low standard, it is also a moral hazard. How do children learn the importance of treating other people well, achieving to the best of their ability, obeying the law and growing as a person? If you wonder why bullying has gotten worse, just look at the incentives. If nothing you do is right or wrong, you’ll choose the easy (and less moral path), a lot of the time.
And what happens to the good people of the world? Well, there have been studies to prove it out. In socialist societies, no one works very hard because success doesn’t result in reward. In fact, you may be forced to work harder for others. In studies in school, when everyone got the average grade for the work all of them did, the top students stopped putting in the effort and the average grade inevitably dropped. Expect little and you’ll get less. Make excuses for bad behavior and good behavior evaporates.
Most of us grew up knowing that it was wrong to steal, wrong to hurt others and even wrong to hate. But this generation, indoctrinated with the idea of egalitarian extremism, where no matter how you act, the results should be the same, now cannot tell the difference. This is why we see the young defending Hamas. They cannot see the difference between a terrorist group who has done nothing to develop their people and their land, and a country (on the same kind of lousy land) who built a thriving society that benefits not just Israeli Jews, but anyone who seeks to work there.
Society will collapse if we reward the wrong behavior and expect so little of so many, assuming that the hard-working and moral people will continue to support society. It’s time for our politicians to read “Atlas Shrugged,” so they can understand that their policies have never worked and cannot work. Actions have consequences, and the choices they make to excuse and exonerate evil will only lead to more of the same.
