If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming—the world. — Henry David Thoreau
There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement. — Eric Hoffer
One of the most striking things about modern politics is how many supposedly serious “problems” are not really problems at all for most people. Take this “problem” for example:
The average man who had comments like this made to them is going to say something like, “What, are you trying to fatten me up, Cindy? Ha, ha!” Then, he’ll have nearly forgotten about her comment by the time he’s finished his sandwich. If there was a problem here, it wouldn’t be that Cindy needs diversity training, it would be that Michael is a sensitive little crybaby.
We see this same thing on college campuses, where students throw public fits and declare that they aren’t “safe” because someone they don’t like is giving a speech. Of course, this “problem” could easily be solved by simply not going to their speech. Do they need “safe spaces” and endless fights about free speech on campus or do these weaklings need to grow up enough to recognize that not everyone agrees with them?
Speaking of college students, is the fact that some of them don’t want to pay their loans back a reason to create a new government policy, or do they just need a life coach to talk to them about their choices and personal responsibility? The same thing could be said for the people lobbying the government to raise the minimum wage. For the vast majority of people, those are considered starter jobs, not positions you should be in long-term. There may be a few exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of people making minimum wage long-term either put in zero effort, have zero skills, or should just move on to another job. Again, that isn’t a job for the government, it’s a job for a life coach.
How about illegal aliens? Aren’t all of their problems entirely self-created and couldn’t they avoid them by simply not planning to go to a foreign country and break the law? What about liberal claims that there are people that are so incompetent that they can’t even manage to get a government ID for voting? Do we need to keep our elections insecure for the sake of these incompetents or do they need to learn some basic life skills? Along similar lines, about 95% of the people #BlackLivesMatter portrays as martyrs killed by the cops aren’t victims in any meaningful sense. Over and over again, we see the same pattern. Someone with a rap sheet as long as your arm runs into a cop, behaves in a reckless and dangerous fashion, and gets killed either justifiably or by accident. Do we need to defund the police or get rid of the cops altogether because of this? Is the real problem even the police or is it actually just people making terrible life choices until it eventually leads to severe injuries or death?
Of course, we can’t forget about the ultimate self-created problem: transsexualism. Instead of just acknowledging the truth, which is that people can’t switch genders and that anyone who goes that route is highly likely to be destined for a life of misery, we’re turning our entire society on its head to accommodate transexuals. We’re pretending there are no physical differences between a woman and a man pretending to be a woman. We’re allowing men pretending to be women to play women’s sports and enter women’s bathrooms. We’re treating it like some kind of sin to even acknowledge that a man who now claims to be a woman was ever a man at all. We’re all expected to lie about their gender, lie about gender in general, and say nothing as children are brainwashed into transsexualism and convinced to take life-altering chemicals and mutilate themselves physically. Maybe instead of going that route, we should just refer people in that position to therapists, let them pay for their own surgeries if they insist on it, and stop insisting that everyone else cater to their delusions. The problem isn’t that the government hasn’t done enough, it is that it has created all kinds of new problems trying to fix people’s self-created issues.
Instead of coming up with a new government program every time someone complains about something, maybe liberals should start asking if it’s a problem these individuals can fix on their own. Maybe they should, for the first time in their lives, ask whether they’re doing more harm than good by encouraging dependence and coddling foolish people instead of encouraging them to be responsible human beings. Liberals, being liberals, will probably never do that, but the rest of us should. Ultimately, we are not doing our country or our fellow citizens any good by treating them as if they’re fragile imbeciles that can’t be expected to live up to the same standards as the rest of us.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know. You can follow him on Parler here.
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