Sunday, January 30, 2011

Mankind's Benefactor: The Individual

Mankind’s Benefactor: The Individual

(Long Live the Individual)

History reveals the importance of the individual.
Here is a list of unapproved individuals who have led us into prosperity and liberty:
Wilbur and Orville Wright (a couple of know-nothing bicycle mechanics from Dayton)
Albert Einstein (a lowly Swiss patent clerk)
Henry Ford (another bicycle mechanic)
Thomas Edison (a partially deaf, home-schooled eccentric)
Moses (a Hebrew slave)
Abraham Lincoln (initially, a barefoot, poverty-stricken, woodsman, living in the North American wilderness. He was a home-schooled, autodidact.)

Jesus of Nazareth (probably shunned as being of illegitimate birth, probably illiterate)

John Adams (unvetted American lawyer; "Who is this man?" demanded George III)

James Watt (mostly home-schooled, apprenticed to an instrument maker)

Benito Juarez (born of pure Zapotec parents, did not speak Spanish in his formative years, and was considered low-caste by Mexican elites of his time. Juarez thought Mexico would prosper under capitalism, but was constantly opposed by the power politicians.)

Robert Goddard (the real father of space flight ----not NASA ---- son of a bookkeeper, salesman, and machine-shop owner of modest means, Goddard was the lone inventor of liquid-propelled rockets. WhenWerner von Braun was captured, and asked where the Germans had acquired their know-how for building V2 rockets, von Braun looked pained and answered: "From Robert Goddard, of course.")

Ronald Reagan (subject of constant belittling and dismissiveness, even by Republicans; "an actor," they sniff, with their snoots high in the air. He came from a disadvantaged family (by virtue of his father’s alcoholism), and struggled to better his lot. He put himself through college, and worked for many years as an obscure radio announcer.

Frederick Douglass (subjugated because of his race, he was forbidden from realizing his potential by the elites of his time. He took it upon himself to learn reading and writing, thus enabling his escape from bondage.)

On the other hand, history gives us some rascally collectives.

Mankind's Bane: The Approved Collective

Mankind’s Bane: The Approved Collective

The collective derives its importance for being a political force, and is, therefore, strongly preferred by politicians.

A common theme that has been inserted into popular culture these days is that only approved collective efforts are legitimate. The Tea Party movement is characterized as "a bunch of loony, wacko extremists, clinging to their guns and their bibles." By coincidence, the Tea Party collective unites under a belief in Individualism: individual rights and individual responsibilities. To be legitimate, in the view of our elite masters, the individual must subjugate himself to an approved collective, such as a union, a government agency, or an organization that supports approved collectives.

When a letter is offered to a newspaper for publication on the editorial page, it has a very good chance of being published if the author is a member of Planned Parenthood or the League of Women Voters. However, if the author is an adherent to Tea Party views, the letter is swiftly "spiked."

Do you ever wonder why the newscasts and news papers seem so uniformly homogenous, and so devoid of original thought? This is the reason: They must all reflect the views of an approved collective. If the news shows individuals in a bad light, it is front page material. If the news shows an approved collective in a bad light, it is either "spiked" or relegated to the footnotes on page 17.

A persistent, forceful effort was made by the news collective to tie the Tucson assassin (Jared Loughner) to the Tea Party. A letter opposing a public presentation by Focus on the Family is prominently featured on the letters page of our local news paper. The message here is: Tea Party people are assassins. Unapproved collectives must be silenced.

History shows us some collectives that had the approval of elites in their time:
unions
racialist, nationalists
communists
Spanish Conquistadores
Moorish Invaders
Plantation owners
aggrieved victims (the poor, minorities, undocumented foreigners)
Unions continue to be valued (because of their political utility), in spite of having wrecked education and the automobile industry.

To understand the approval/non-approval status of a collective, consider how today’s elites view
minorities, who started low as far as "life’s lottery" is concerned, but refused the role of aggrieved victim:
Marco Rubio
Thomas Sowell
Justice Clarence Thomas
Sarah Palin
Walter Williams
They should be celebrated, but because they personify and revere individualism, they are despised.