Wicked Gravity

If I decide to jump off a bridge and end up dead, that’s my business. My fellow man has no right to shield me from the consequences of my actions.

If I drop out of school even as the media, my teachers, and my parents report that the global economy offers rewards only for those who acquire 21st Century skills, who is responsible for my future poverty? U.S. Census figures for decades have shown a direct correlation between academic success in youth and material success in adulthood. An individual can be quite successful without an expensive degree, to be sure, but one’s odds are greatly improved with the piece of parchment. If I choose to ignore those figures and everything else everybody is trying to tell me, that is my choice. I have a right to my choice. And like the sad individual who jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge, I alone should bear the responsibility for my choice.

Reality explains in no uncertain terms the success or failure of one’s decision-making process. The fact that a man chooses to jump off a bridge is tragic and regrettable. The fact that the man who jumped off the bridge will soon be dead is justice. Gravity did not select this man for destruction; this man chose gravity to be his destroyer. No one would argue that this dead man did not get exactly what he deserved. His friends and family might grieve the loss of their friend and brother, but to say “gravity was unfair to him,” or “the chips were stacked against him once he let go of the rail and began to plummet,” or “corporate fat cats placed gravity there to destroy the little guy” is just ludicrous.

Socialist economic policies, like the ones supported by every Democratic candidate for the presidency, promise “economic justice” for all. But justice is not at all what they seek. In a just world productive people reap the benefits of their hard work and creativity. Whatever wealth they accumulate is theirs to do with as they please. In a just world the unproductive, unmotivated, uncreative reap considerably less. In a just world some justly succeed, others justly fail. Democrats are actually promising their constituency that if they achieve power they will work to UNDO what just, free markets have done.

People have come to expect government to save them from reality, the reality they created by exercising their right to make choices. In asking government to do these things, of course, people are willingly handing over their right to make choices. In other words, we are trading in our actual rights for imagined rights to food, clothing, shelter, and health care. You won’t find any Democrat running for president arguing against this trend: This is how the party of FDR managed to gain power in the first place. By 1972 they had built their welfare state. For decades we’ve watched their poison, socialist economic policies weaken the backbone of the once-rugged American worker, collapse the nation’s inner cities into sloth, drugs, and crime. “Progressive” public school educators stamping out “unfair” competition among students and among teachers… everybody gets a diploma! Why? Because people need diplomas. Everybody getting a paycheck... Why? Because people have bills to pay. Whether or not anything of value has actually been produced is, for them, irrelevant.

Catering to the needs of the very people they crippled is job security for Democratic officeholders.