Leftism mutates a lot. First it declared itself the champion of the proletariat. When that didn’t work out, it became the defender of racial and gender-based groups. Those are minor details, however. The root of leftism’s existence remains unchanged.
Leftism is born from the incapacity to accept that inequality of both individuals and groups is an inescapable feature of the human condition. If you can accept that everybody starts in a different place even before birth and, consequently, the results everybody will get in every area of life will not be equal or possibly even comparable, you won’t be a sincere leftist. If you believe that this state of affairs is wrong and must be remedied through human actions, you’ll end up a leftist.
So far, so good. Accept inequality – not leftist. Don’t accept it – leftist.
But here’s where problems begin. The initial step on the way towards remedying the inequality of people and groups is, as Kamala Harris says, to give a leg up to those who are behind through no fault of their own. Here’s the famous image of what that’s supposed to look:
Again, it looks benign enough, right? Well, yeah. But then it becomes clear very fast that propping up the underachievers doesn’t solve anything. There are still those who are better endowed by nature, chance, life, family, or God, and they’ll still reach enormously farther than the artificially propped up. I’d never dance for the Royal Ballet Company even if you showered me with every grant, scholarship and handout imaginable.
So what’s the next step? It’s invariably to hold down those who are better endowed to let the less fortunate catch up. That dude with long legs in the picture should have them broken to help out the short-legged one because there’s simply no other way. We see the beginnings of that mentality in the picture where the tall person has his crate taken away. Leftism always, invariably, irreparably leads to the extermination of the more fortunate because there’s never enough social rejigging to erase their advantage without erasing them. Mass murder is not leftism gone astray. It’s leftism allowed to lead to its natural conclusion. Problem is, even once you forcibly remove all the unfairly advantaged, in the very next generation, there will once again be more and less advantaged. They’ll all start from a different baseline. The fence will be much taller for all of them. But even in relation to the much taller fence, somebody will be better positioned to peek over it. So you have to start rejigging, re-engineering, re-propping and re-disadvantaging all over again.
The only winner in this game is the fence. Humans always lose because it’s in their nature to be different. Leftism battles something that will always exist for as long as humans do.
Clarissa's Blog 
“If you can accept …. If you believe that this state of affairs is wrong and must be remedied through human actions”, you’ll end up a leftist.”
In my usual wishy-washy way I’m a bit in the middle. I’m in favor of mitigation when possible and feasible. I was never that bothered by AA scholarships (not nearly as dysfunctional once as they later became) but I never assumed they’d have more than a trivial effect. It was one more opportunity in a system with lots of types of opportunity. Great! Their failure to bring in the revolution however sent a bunch of people around the bend…
Where I really break with leftism is the inability to ever be satisfied by progress when it does happen.
On the other hand… I bristle against the more rightwing idea of people filling pre-destined niches from which they can never escape and so they should never try or trying to recapture a past that never existed.
I’m all for reasonable incrementalism.
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I agree that it’s great to do what we can when we can. But it will only work if we remember with great clarity that no absolute equity will ever be achieved. Maybe things can be shifted a little bit but that’s it. The grandiose pretentions of social engineers are always the problem.
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Sacrosanct words, Clarissa.
Also, there are two types of leftists:
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Well, I was born with a family somewhat split by some of the leftism that emerged by the failing capitalism of the depression. I still have some sympathy for unionism but only the small ones that have not been corrupted by crime or by greedy political “servants”, but I detest socialism because it always seems to descend into authoritarian communism and/or feminism.
One can see the open sympathy of leftist ideals in the movies of the depression and the Spanish civil war in “The Grapes Of Wrath” and “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and the writings of Orwell including “Homage To Catalonia”. There was also support from the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion and Canada’s Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, all leftists, some communist, and quite a few Jewish. There is a famous picture of Orwell, Hemmingway, and Bethune:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/image-shows-george-orwell-and-ernest-hemingway-during-the-spanish-civil-war/
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I share your disdain for leftism but your analogy of the picture doesn’t work. You take a big leap by saying that “propping up the underachievers doesn’t solve anything.” It does ion the picture in that they are all trying to achieve the same thing – watch the game. The shortest child needs help that the taller “dude” doesn’t need. There’s no judgement in either of those statements.
I want you to win this argument…so just don’t conflict “extra support” as an automatic sign of underachievement.
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“they are all trying to achieve the same thing – watch the game.”
Doesn’t it bother anyone that they’re trying to watch a game for free that looks like a paid event?
That hardly anyone mentions this is one of the things I don’t like about leftism….
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It’s fine that the little dude gets help to watch the game. But the next step is he’ll want to play it and we’ll all be stuck either recognizing that he’ll never be able to do it or trying to expel all the qualified players to make him feel less unsuccessful.
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As a teacher, I used to think we should help all kids do better in school and that all kids needed was motivation and encouragement. Being a substitute teacher in some seriously terrible ghetto schools permanently cured me of that mindset.
I no longer think helping lazy, dumb, violent and disrespectful kids is worth a damn, they don’t want to be in school and would rather play Fortnite or other violent video games and scroll social media. I’m willing to help kids who really want to learn and need help, but now I think the lazy, dumb, violent and disrespectful kids should work in a factory or pick up rubbish alongside the road, be useful.
I don’t care if you call me a fascist, but I was not raised to be a lazy, disrespectful shit and flunk out of school. My parents were very conscious of the stereotypes about Hispanic students being lazy and getting bad grades and of teenage Hispanic girls getting pregnant, that’s why they were hard on us academically and made sure we did chores. Sometimes I wonder if American kids would benefit from the parents destroying their phones and PlayStations and making them clean the house, and yes, I was spanked as a kid
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That is not a problem with the offering help, though, it’s a problem with the compulsory nature of the schooling.
When I worked for my community college as a public-access English tutor, I got a lot of students from the remedial classes and I *loved* helping them because they really, really wanted to get it right, learn, do better. Sure, not everybody’s going to be a top-tier writer, but almost everyone can *do a bit better* with some help.
And the huge difference between them and the ghetto highschoolers is, the CC students are there because they *want* to be there. They have a goal: they’re probably not going to become professional essayists, they just need to get through the prereqs so they can complete the nursing assistant program. That’s in reach for a lot of them, even if their high school completely failed them and they’re not devoted readers.
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Compulsory school attendance (can’t call it “education”) has done a lot of damage to the fabric of society. Some children would be better off with just basic literacy (which they are not getting at the moment) and working somewhere a few hours a day. And not just non-academic children, some bright ones do not like school either and would benefit from starting work as soon as they are physically able to.
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I actually agree, and I’m an educator. A lot of kids I’ve worked with don’t want to be in school and see school as a place to hang out with friends and get free food and see their teachers as dorks. Some kids should really just learn the basics of reading, writing and math and get a job, or heck, just stay home and play Fortnite if that’s they want. This way, only kids who want to learn can be in school.
On the other hand, there’s a lot of really bright kids who hate school because of the regimentation and socialization, these kids would benefit from earning their GED as soon as possible and find work. A lot of talented artists dropped out of high school for this reason, school was too boring and regimented and they were smart kids ahead of the other students and they would rather practice their art. I’ve subbed at a lot of high schools where the assigned work was just busywork on Google Classroom or worksheets to keep them in their seats, this is alienating to bright kids
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Moreover, the rise of peer-group pressure and juvenile delinquency can be traced back to the appearance of full-time, long-term compulsory education. And what a daft idea to put 30 extremely different children in the same class, just because they happen to be the same age.
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Yeah, the net effect there is that the really hopeless kids simply reinforce each other, and whatever middle you’ve got in there– easily-influenced kids who’d be OK if they were around well-behaved, hardworking or conscientious kids– just get pulled down the hole with the rest. For the top of the class, all of it is just a waste of time. Who benefits here? Just the admin critters drawing their paychecks AFAICT.
School until 8th grade used to be normal, even for better pupils, and the ground covered in those 8 years was larger than what high school covers now. Part of the reason they could do that is that the really dumb and unmotivated kids dropped out by 5th grade and went to work on the farm. There are a lot of people who will never do higher math, who are perfectly capable of handling livestock, pruning fruit trees, and moving hay bales. Instead, we shackle them to academic failure and forbid them to do anything useful with their time. Of course they’re going to be disruptive. Who wouldn’t be?
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Heck, I work in finance and I can tell you what I was told on day one. When I first started I was told that to do my job I needed to know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. That’s it. Nothing else. I was required to take all sorts of math classes to pass college, and yet here I am working in finance and the only level of math I really needed was what we were taught in 3rd grade. Its absolutely ludicrous.
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Exactly. I went all the way through precalc and trig. Have never needed anything but arithmetic and geometry IRL.
My eldest is chomping at the bit to start calculus– right now blowing through some algebra texts to make sure he’s ready. Wants to be an engineer or something. At current rate, will be done with Algebra II in a couple of months. He’s 12. School would only have slowed him down and got in his way. AFAICT, the bright kids who can use that stuff will learn it on their own if you just give them access to resources, and nobody else even needs it. Why do we insist on everybody sitting through algebra?
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I’m friends with the Chair of Math and Stats at my college, and even the most basic knowledge of calculus among students who choose to major in math is non-existent. Professors have to start from the very basics of explaining what variables are and how they are used. It’s insane.
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Totally. Mass slaughter is baked into the recipe.
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I completely agree, equity is more like Harrison Bergeron than the idealistic helping people. I’ve had a lifelong hatred of group projects where everyone shares the grade because since I was often the best writer in the group, the other members made me write the report. I’d do most of the work and they slacked off, the group got an A but I did most of the work. That’s why I don’t collaborate with people unless it’s friends or family, I’m not being a pack mule.
It’s also why I find it disturbing that so many students can’t work independently, they always want to work in groups even for stuff like answering questions on a worksheet. They’re so used to group projects that they can’t work on their own, not everything is meant to be done in groups. By nature I’m a lone wolf, I don’t like groups
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Ugh. Group projects.
I was always one of the highest-grades in the class (no matter what the class), and resented the heck out of other students having any input whatsoever in my grade. And yeah, I ended up doing all the work. Not so much because they made me, but because I am incapable of delegating that sort of thing.
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LOL, yeah, I tended to choose a crew chief because they were sick and tired of working for incompetents. They really did not want the no glory and all blame position, but … ;-D
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I hated group projects too. I wasn’t exactly a good student, but I did my part. The group projects were always nightmares. You had the punctual students wanting to get it done and out of the way immediately. You had the slackers wanting to wait till the last minute. And nothing but conflict and hurt egos from both sides clashing.
Heck there was a group project that almost kept me from graduating college. We were required to have X hours of foreign language classes to graduate, something that we did not need and never should been required. I was taking German and the professor told us half our grade would be coming from a group project. The professor told us repeatedly two things. First “Don’t use Google Translate” and second to email our project to him to review as we were supposed to give a presentation before the rest of the class. (yea that went well.)
My partner kept missing the meeting times and pushing it off. Eventually we got together a week before it was due and hashed it out so each of us did half. I am absolutely miserable with foreign languages, so I spent several hours writing my part, and then translating it. I couldn’t get hold of my partner and had no idea where he lived. I only saw him once or twice a week in class.
He finally got ahold of me at damn near midnight the night before it was due. We met up in the library as soon as it was open. His stuff wasn’t translated, and our class was at 8:30 or 9:00 so there wasn’t much time. I did what I could with the parts he did have, but what I didn’t know is that he decided to run huge quotes through google translate.
So when class started and we gave our presentation, I gave my part which I admit wasn’t great. I hated the topic and wasn’t great at German to begin with. Then it was his turn. Even I with my broken German could tell he had used google translate. It was absolutely awful. Thankfully the professor figured out what happened as I managed to pass, but it was an absolute nightmare being stuck up front next to that guy. I felt like I was watching an oncoming train about to hit me.
I despise group work. It is one of the worst things ever created in academia. Thank the Lord I am free of it.
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My father came up with this joke (60 years ago in commie Romania): an engineer of Jewish extraction was about to be promoted to “chief engineer”. However, he needed to pass a test on “socialist equity”. He could not get his head around it and went to his rabbi. Rabbi took his trousers and underpants off and said: place your nose between my buttocks. The engineer did so and the rabbi said: this is “socialist equity, you have a nose between my buttocks and I, too, have a nose between my buttocks.
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You can also have a situation where the “unfairly advantaged” left and became even more successful. Ayn Rand couldn’t have written a better John Galt for SA communists than Elon Musk.
Calling Musk an “apartheid beneficiary” is a bit deceptive. Apartheid supporters were mostly white working classed who were worried about black people taking their jobs. Musk is an example of expat engineers who moved to SA to work in the mining industry.
Capitalist classes never liked apartheid. They just preferred it to socialism.
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