House of Eratosthenes

The fifty-fourth Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes out this morning to Ann Coulter for the uppercut at the end of her latest column, Liberal Victimhood: A Game You Can Play at Home. She makes the case that for half a century or more, liberals have energized their supporters, and even non-supporters, into doing nonsensical things by playing the victim…then closes with this zinger.

…ironically, Obama’s father is from Africa: He never suffered from the ancient policies that, today, give his son Victim Gold. To the contrary, if Obama’s African relatives had anything to do with slavery, it was on the business end.

I’m biased in favor of Ms. Coulter because this was something I’d been noticing of late. But I don’t blame the liberals — they’re just trying to win elections, something politicians are supposed to do.

What I find much more worthy of thought, is the misbehavior of the rest of us. My thoughts, also, are more directed at the third-person-hood of victimology. We don’t need to see any tangible connection between the guy who wants us to do something stupid, and the purported victim, to lose all or most of our cognitive wherewithal.

Who owns this business?

The business owner.

How are the wages of the employees determined?

They negotiate them with the business owner when they are hired.

Who decides whether to build a wheelchair ramp?

The business owner.

Who decides whether breastfeeding is allowed in the restaurant?

The business owner.

What do you do if you don’t like the decision he makes about that?

Eat somewhere else.

And how do we…ZOMFG!! LOOK AT THAT POOR OLD MAN HE STUBBED HIS TOE, OR GOT DISCRIMINATED AGAINST!! OR THERE’S A FLY IN HIS SOUP OR HIS PECKER DOESN’T WORK OR HE CAN’T GET A GREEN CARD!!

Aaaiigggh, we need some laws! And fines! And taxes! Programs! Subsidies! Doing something stupid is better than doing nothing! Aiiigh! Move, move, move!!

There’s a little bit of this absurd exchange in all of us. We understand who-owns-what decision, and we act on that understanding, right up until we find out that someone got a raw deal somewhere. Then we suddenly enter this bizarro world, in which nobody is really responsible for anything as an individual. Everything anybody does, is everybody else’s business; the most competent way to get money spent is to route it through the government. When you wake up first thing in the morning, is it your opinion that the most responsible way to spend money is to get it spent through the government? I’ll bet not. I’ll bet even some of you who are on the DNC’s mailing list, show the proper skepticism, at least until the focus-group propaganda goons go to work on you. How about in the moment in which you retire for the night, hmmm? Think the government can spend money more effectively than you can, nickel-for-nickel? What about in most of the waking moments in between, what’s your opinion then, typically?

So how come your perception of the world around you, shifts so dramatically, in the few seconds in which you’re feeling sorry for someone?

It is, in 2009, the most effective and reliable way to poison individuality and reason. Just find a victim…somewhere. A barrel of reasoning power is undone by a half-pint of good old-fashioned compassion — gone awry, alchemized into a toxic lace. It throws rational thinking off. People falling in love, think more clearly than people feeling sorry for someone.

We do NOT need to be told a believable story about how the spending of this money will help the injured person. We pretend we need this, but we don’t. Go on, review some of these outlandish tales about how things were going to be fixed. Look at the most recent one — stimulate the economy. And where was that money going to go if it wasn’t taxed from us in the first place? We’d have put it in a big composting heap in the backyard?

Ask the “average” guy who’s more qualified…Barack Obama or Sarah Palin. Obama, of course! Then ask ’em why…duh…er…lights go out. The subject is changed, or some droning stream of Tina Fey quotes slowly plops out of their cakeholes. The fact of the matter is that it really is the most naked form of racism you can find nowadays. Obama and Palin are both fine speechmakers — they both stumble, embarrassingly, now and then if you wait long enough for them to do so. They’re just about on par.

But a bubbly, precocious hockey-mom is expected to talk the way Sarah Palin does. Black guys, on the other hand, are supposed to be angry. That’s what this “There’s Something About Him!” really means; the “something about” Obama is that our society has been conditioned to expect a sulking, smoldering heap of a rap-star dude wherever we see a black male, and for those who’ve bought into this, Obama personally offers a rather disorienting departure from the stereotype. Enter the victimology. Someone is portrayed as a victim, and suddenly large numbers of people are persuaded toward silly, nonsensical things.

I don’t know what causes us to do this. The theory I have found most worthy of entertainment, is that there is an unspoken preciousness to the event in which we demonstrate our inner decency to those around us…or are simply given an opportunity to do this. Someone loses something in a house fire, I give ’em a dollar, I’m a righteous dude. Maybe that someone was a millionaire, maybe the thing lost was sentimental and can’t be replaced with all the money in the world. It doesn’t matter. Look how decent I am! And the wonderful thing is, if I keep all my money in my pocket and vote the victim a large bundle of your dollars…I’m still just as wonderful. For the moment.

This is a thirst that is never, ever quenched for very long. The decency has to be proven over, and over, and over again. Real decency would only have to be showcased once, if at all.

I don’t like that theory, but it has endured. The reason I don’t like it is that if it’s true, those among us who are most lacking in inner decency, would be the most enamored of the opportunities to advertise it falsely. So someone who really does see blacks and whites on equal footing, won’t place too much value on an event in which he can manifest that he does so. Obama’s victory would therefore be a sign not so much that bigotry has ended in America, but that it has softened. And, furthermore, if you wish to seek out instances of it, you’re better off looking among those who voted Obama/Biden, than among those who voted for the opposition. They had/have a great deal more to prove.

Geraldine Ferraro — you can tell this by the great hurry in which she was shushed up — was right. I’m reasonably sure a theoretical white guy named “Barack Hussein Obama” with all the personal privileges of the real black one, and a similar bunch of America-hating friends, wouldn’t have gotten terribly far.

By the way, Coulter’s statement narrowly edged out a quote from Margaret Thatcher I found over at fellow Webloggin contributor Joshuapundit’s place:

The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.

Today, you need to be reasonably well-read about twentieth-century history, to see the logic and truth of what she said there.

I’m afraid, in the next six to twelve months, this will not be the case.

This post is Morgan at his best.

I was just thinking as I read this.. you can’t keep the water level up in a leaky bottle by taking water out of the bottle and adding it back to the bottle.

In the same way, Government spending cannot stimulate the economy. The only way the economy can grow is to generate more wealth.

The government cannot generate wealth, it is a net-wealth sink. We need some government, yes. But it is only the answer to a few of society’s problems. Defense. Contract enforcement. Maybe some infrastructure.

The rest of them we have to work out among ourselves.
- philmon | 01/29/2009 @ 13:25
Yea, I love how Pres. Obama keeps harping on about “creating” more jobs. Really? Tell me ONE job Mr. Pres. you’ve ever created, ONE!

And somehow he thinks NOW he’s gonn’a create what, 3 freakin’ million jobs by spending billions on the CRAP in this bill?

I know as a business owner that’s how I plan on adding to the payroll, I’ll just spend more. Yup, works every time. WTF!!!
- tim | 01/29/2009 @ 16:26
William Graham Sumner, Professor of Political Economy and of Sociology at Yale, gave a lecture in the 1870s which began with this argument:

“The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C’s interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.” Ambrose Bierce wrote somewhat more pithily that “When A convinces B to do something for C with B’s money, A is a scoundrel”, or words to that effect.

Franklin Roosevelt’s speechwriters perverted this concept for his April 7, 1932 speech in order to dub D ( the recipient of largess) the “Forgotten Man”.

And now we have the Lightbringer. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
- rob | 01/29/2009 @ 22:24
Morgan,

I first encountered Sumner’s lecture in Amity Schlaes’ “The Forgotten Man, A New History of the Great Depression.” It’s an astonishing read, and one I heartily recommend.

I’ve just now found the entire lecture here:

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Best/SumnerForgotten.htm

I’m struck by how profoundly you understand this, and how true it is to intelligent men separated by over a hundred years.

Thanks for your work.
- rob | 01/29/2009 @ 22:33

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Best Sentence LIVThursday, January 29th, 2009

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Thursday, January 29th, 2009