I felt that another Understanding the Left was called for after my last post about the left hating Israel, because there really needs to be some clarification about how the left feels about success. Or specifically why they hate it.
I bet you think this one will be easy compared to the last one, but I think this was the most difficult "Understanding the Left" piece I have written. Because it really took cracking the Israel thing for me to have a better understanding of why the left hates success so much.
That's kind of how this works: I'm not an expert on these things, I am not a political science major. I am not a journalist, columnist, published author, anything prestigious like that. I have to work these things out like anyone else does. So it can take several steps to solve the equation. Luckily I am really good at math. But then, I suspect that is an attribute common to most of us on the right.
But enough about the thought process that goes on behind the scenes of these writings...to the question. Why does the left hate success? I alluded to the main reason in my Israel post, that success, to the left, is a result of human nature, which they loathe. And so they loathe successful people. But that doesn't really answer the question. Why do they think success is a result of human nature? Well, of course it is a result of human nature, so again, that doesn't really shed a light on anything. So let's try another question: Why does the left think human nature is bad?
That's the big question. And, as someone who loves mathematics and logic, I am going to extract a simpler question from that, because I think that the left's view of human nature is the ultimate "understanding the left" topic to tackle, and I'll save that for another day. So boiling that big question down in relation to "why does the left hate success?", I will posit the real question for this post: why does the left think success is bad?
Before we begin, I want to contrast the idea of success as it pertains to the left and the right. A good example of this, as far as it pertains to those of us on the right, is IMAO's Frank J's book How to Fix Everything in America Forever: The Plan to Keep America Awesome. And I swear, I never meant to pimp that guy's book in this piece. Or ever. I haven't even actually read it, because, I dunno. I have an aversion to spending money or something. Stop judging me!
Anyway, I've read excerpts from the book, and the title alone illustrates my point, as well as Frank's constant, probably unintentional, inspirational statements of "be awesome!", and "be awesomer than the day before!"...which is clearly bad spelling and grammar, both of which he is known for. Any way, the point is, the right loves awesome. We love success. We love achievement. We love being the best. We don't see it as evil, we see it as people, as individuals, overcoming obstacles and using sheer determination and hard work to make something happen. We understand that, yes, people do build things. And even when someone just gets lucky, like winning the lottery or something, sure we might see some of that as a little cheap, but we will applaud what they do with that luck. Because nobody is ever really successful just based on luck. And if someone does just get rich by luck, we just say "good for them".
But the left hates that success. Being the best is an affront to them. People "didn't build that". They think success is only derived from luck or from nefarious means.If you are rich, you robbed from the poor, or were given it without earning it (coincidentally the top way that rich leftists get their money) If you are a successful businessperson, you cheated somehow. You used that evil human nature to get ahead somehow. You're worse than Hitler!
Yeah, we've heard all of that silliness before. It's easy to understand why the right, and pretty much any normal thinking person likes success. But why does the left hate it? It really makes no sense. Why does the left think one can only be successful by "cheating", or by putting others at a disadvantage?
Because they don't understand the concept of success at all, that's why. To them, success is simply being on top of the pile. They think that, to get there, you must squash everyone else. In other words, through their loathing of humanity, they really believe that there is a limit to what humanity can achieve. That there is some kind of ceiling that impassable, and to be on the top, you can only push others down to reach that ceiling, that there is no breaking through that limit. So, viewing that, it makes sense that they believe that success, wealth, and everything else should be distributed evenly.
But there isn't a ceiling, and success has nothing to do with squashing people. True success isn't "how can I become the biggest fish in this pond?". It is, "how to I make this pond bigger so I can grow?". That is how the right views success, how we view becoming awesome. We don't look at America and the rest of the world and ask, "how can we hurt other countries to the point that they are totally submissive to us?". We look at America and say "how can we grow?".
The left truly believes that, when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. This defies not only common sense (the poor can't give much to the rich), but also the proof of wealth creation that America has shown over two centuries. When the richer get richer, so do the poor. Look at our poor...look at poor people in underdeveloped countries. There is a big difference. We hear that "1 in 6 Americans suffer from hunger" on various ads and such. No they don't. They suffer from not having good food. But they aren't starving. They aren't suffering from swollen bellies and a high infant mortality rate like you see in African countries where there is actual hunger and food shortage.
I have seen actual poverty...but not in America. In other countries. It does exist. I talked to a CEO of an energy company in an eastern European country once, and found out I made more money than they did. I'm nowhere near a CEO level, much less at the corporate level in the company I work for. I am a middle class worker, and I make more money than a "rich CEO" in some eastern European country. I can't imagine their poor.
America isn't successful because we squashed everyone else. Far from it. The left likes to claim that America is imperialistic, or colonial, because that plays into their ideology of how success is attained. But, unlike every other major world power in history, America did not become successful through conquest, or colonization, or empire building. We did it through individualist free market growth. There is a reason why currencies fluctuate. When a nation builds wealth, its currency is worth more. That is true success. The left doesn't understand it. Wealth, to them, must be redistributed, because they cannot fathom anything becoming more, or success being independent of others failure.
They cannot understand the true awesomeness that is America, and so they hate what they do not understand.
Very interesting. I've also spent some time trying to figure out the left, and think part of their illogic stems from fear. Fear of failure and ridicule. Success requires risk taking, and those who a afraid to take those risks have to justify their resulting failure. Another part is the misunderstanding of the source of income. We earn when we bring value to the marketplace. People who don't believe in their own worth (and hence don't see the point in taking risk) are going to shy away from an open market. They start out believing they will fail, and again have to blame someone else. "The game is not fair, the rules are rigged", but they find themselves on the sideline because they don't understand the game.
ReplyDeleteThanks. This post is really a very short version of the original. I did attack the coward angle as well as the whiner angle,, as you suggested, but I want to save the good bits for my opus maximus...why the left is at war with human nature. Which explains it all, really. So I watered this one down and just kept it focused on why they despise success specifically.
DeleteBut, your comments are truly in line with my thinking on the matter. So I suspect you probably already know the gist of what I'll say in my next post. I know I am not the first to figure out, in a limited way, what the left is all about.
Brilliantly put, succinct and precise. In a word? Awesome
ReplyDeleteOkay, so...success--TRUE Success--comes from building new wealth so that not only the "Wealthy", but also all of those around and "below" them are also more wealthy than they were before.
ReplyDeleteSo...why, then, am I poorer than I was before? Why is it that I, and most of the people I know (In America!) have LESS wealth, and are only able to buy LESS food and FEWER items than we did just 10 years ago?
Are these Lefties in some way CORRECT about (at least SOME) of the Wealthiest people getting ahead only by stripping away the wealth that ought to be available to myself and the people I know?
No, because the wealthy also have less money now. There are fewer millionaires in America now than there were 10 years ago.
DeleteWhen wealth decreases, it decreases for all, and an increase works the same way. Sure, there will always be people who find a way to make money in a bad economy, but not as much as they can make in a good one.