TWO STORIES

 I was probably around 11 years old the first time I went to a birthday party where I received a prize without winning any of the games.  This was a new experience for someone in the late 1950s/early 1960s.  It was the first time everyone got a prize whether they did anything or not.  On the way home with my mother I tried to explain that the prize I had received was not because I had won, but just something for taking part in the game.  She didn’t understand. I remember my overwhelming emotion was one of shame for getting something for nothing.

Recently I heard a successful minority artist being interviewed on the radio.  The interviewer kept stressing the fact that he had worked several jobs during his time at college in order to pay his tuition.  My thinking was “so what – a lot of people I know as well as my own self did the same, some were minorities, some were not.  All were both thankful for and proud of their work and what it had allowed them to accomplish.”   But the interviewer, and to some extent the artist himself, seemed to stress the victim factor of having to work to attend college.  This was such a contrast to the view that such work to improve oneself and/or achieve a goal is something to be proud of.  It does not make someone a victim, but rather a success.

What do these two stories have in common and what do they tell us about society both in years past and today?

To what is one entitled?

Both stories consider a relationship between some personal effort and a reward.  The first story reflects a principle that one does not get something for nothing – one must “win” it by their own hard work.

The second story reflects the idea that if you have to work for something then you are experiencing some sort of victimhood/disentitlement and that the focus of your eventual success should be on the victim experience rather than the personal initiative that led to your success or even the ultimate success itself.

If we consider that these two core principles reflect a more general societal view far beyond the specifics of each story, then one has to wonder: 1) how has such a core value changed so greatly in little over 50 years; and (2) is the change a good one?

A change in message

It was in the 1960s that our society began to seriously question competition, especially for children.  We began to be concerned that hurt feelings of losing were unhealthy and must be eliminated.  Hence the emergence of the “participation trophy” for everyone.

The hidden message of such “trophies” is that really all one has to do is show up.  No effort required beyond mere presence.  A second message is that one has a right to always feel good – no hurt feelings due to losing a competition or otherwise.

The “entitlement” to always feeling good broadened beyond childhood games.  Parents hesitated to say “no” to children for fear of hurt feelings.  Grade inflation was in part motivated by a similar goal.  “Safe spaces” began to appear on college campuses and in the workplace as the children who learned that they had a right to demand happiness grew up and became adults.

This change in attitude continued to explode.  Not only were you entitled to never have a hurt feeling – everyone was entitled to have it all.  Personal choices that may have led to a negative personal consequence became no longer relevant as well as personal characteristics and talents that make each of us the individual we are.  Scientific advances helped in this regard, doing such things as outfitting physically limited bodies with artificial replacements.  Yes, people began to believe that they can and that they are entitled to any and everything they want, including the current idea that they can change their sex at will and that men can be pregnant and give birth to a child.  Questioning any personal desire or gratification is met with an accusation of insensitivity if not bigotry.

Is the new message a good one?

A message of entitlement growing out of a desire to protect from pain at first may sound harmless or perhaps even laudable, but once one reflects on it one can see the broad and changeful effect that it can have. 

It creates a major change in societal values.  Where personal responsibility and pride in one’s work were once lauded, now the responsibility falls upon society as a whole to create a happy environment for all.  (We will save for another time how and who defines “happiness” for all the people.)  A recent television ad advertising a free housing program announced that people should have time to play and do what they want rather than have to work hard to pay for housing; the visuals showed happy individuals riding bikes, playing in parks, etc.

For many today, the concept of “equity” for all as opposed to “equality of opportunity” has become paramount.  If one will have the same result regardless of how much or little effort one puts in, the work ethic becomes meaningless and with it pride in one’s work becomes an archaic concept.

A path to Socialism

With the loss of those concepts a path is cleared toward socialism.  This country has been testing that path for some time, and now it seems that a good half of the country would choose Socialism over Capitalism.

Both systems can be enticing, and neither is perfect.  I will be the first to admit that in America today it is much harder to achieve one’s dreams simply through one’s own hard work and that the promise of utopia that Socialism presents (though ultimately never delivers) sounds lovely.  But at the same time I believe that to give up that individual fulfillment that comes from the sometimes difficult burdens of personal responsibility and hard work would be a hugely wrong step for our society. 

If you only had fun, do you really win?

It is only through the struggles that one faces when allowed to experience hardships and sadness that one can feel the true joys of success.  And it is often those hard times that provide one with the motivation to strive to become truly the best they can be and not just one of the many swimming in the mediocre sea of equity. 

Nowadays of course, everyone expects to get the prize/trophy/reward whether they worked for it or not.  If not provided, they become victims with a claim for an even bigger and better prize.  I think our society was in a better place in the first story - when one felt a bit ashamed of getting something for nothing.

 

Entitlement and the Negation of Patriotism (and how it destroys a country)

A Minnesota city council decided to stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of its meetings because it was not welcoming to everyone in their diverse community.  How, I wonder, is not saying the Pledge more welcoming to anyone except those who despise America?

Soccer star Rapinoe states that America was/is not great for everyone.  In a recent speech to high school students, Rep. Omar denigrated America for not meeting her expectations.

What all these statements and activities reveal is a complete lack of understanding about our country and a replacement of such understanding with a selfish need for immediate gratification.  This entitlement, this expectation and demand that everything be perfect is not realistic nor is it the way that a great democracy works.

In this country perfection does not exist (nor does it or will it exist anywhere; it is something to aspire toward, but not likely achievable).  There are inequalities; people desire things which they do not have; hard work is usually rewarded, but sometimes it is not.  Life is not always fair.

What these people who despise and disrespect America do not understand is that this country, its government, its way of life provide avenues for improvement.  Our Constitution allows us to voice our concerns and our representative form of government allows us to make our voices heard and to create, amend, and abolish laws to further our aspirations toward the more perfect world that everyone seeks.

This is something to admire, not trash.  One can certainly have a personal grievance with or dislike of a particular policy, but that does not mean that the entire country and its system of government merit scorn, contempt, and disrespect.   In very few countries is there an avenue for peaceful change and improvement such as we have here.  That is not something to lightly toss away.

Individuals come and go in our government not by coup or civil war but by election by the people.  While each of those individuals will be more or less liked by each individual voter, they will have been elected by the people of this country and they represent the office that they hold.   Those offices, those elected positions, are key to our democratic way of life.  Even if one did not vote for or does not particularly like the current office holder, if they care at all about this country they will understand that the office itself deserves respect for its necessary place in our democratic system.

But, in this era of entitlement, too many do not understand this.  A selfish feeling of entitlement does not allow room for appreciation or respect.  After all, how can anyone appreciate anything if they believe they are yet entitled to more?  How can they respect a system or a country that refuses to provide them with the immediate and total gratification that they seek?  Like children, they want it and they want it now, and all else be damned.

Do those who spend their days speaking about how awful America is even begin to realize that this may be the only country in the world where they would be allowed to be so disdainful?  Do they even begin to appreciate that it is only because this country is what it is that we have progressed to a place where the grievances they assert are even relevant?  Do they understand that they would be far more successful in achieving the improvements that they seek by working within our democratic structure rather than by tearing it down and trying to destroy the very country that allows them to behave as they do and to seek what they seek?

I think not.  When one has been conditioned to believe that they are entitled to all that they want and that it should be provided immediately, that the world revolves around them, it is hard to understand that real change takes time and work.  One must work not to destroy what one has, but to improve it, and must have the patience needed for real changes to occur.  America allows for that, and this is one of the many reasons why America is great, and yes, great for everyone. 

But, one cannot appreciate America if one does not understand what it is:  its government, its history, its place in the world, its distinctions from other forms of government.  And, when one is only concerned about one’s own selfish and personal interests (however couched in terms of grander political issues), one is not going to care about respecting anything, including the great country that allows them to behave like children, wanting to destroy things because they aren’t getting what they want.  It is the child that needs immediate gratification and will hate and tear apart all that does not give it to him.  The mature mind and emotion will appreciate what one has while at the same time speaking out and working to make it even better. 

So, we are losing an appreciation for our country.  We see that in a lack of national pride, of refusal to respect the symbols of our great country:  the flag, the National Anthem, the White House, the Constitution, the legal system, the offices of government.   We are losing the patriotism that is a necessary part of any country’s existence.

To be clear, patriotism in America does not mean never criticizing or pointing out flaws or working to better the country.  Indeed, America expects and needs its citizens to do that.  But one can do that while still respecting the freedoms that this country already provides, respecting its history and its ability, through its people and its Constitutional rule of law, to evolve, moving ever closer to its asserted ideals.

Patriotism does mean seeing beyond oneself:  seeing oneself as a part of a great country where the citizens are able to work together to improve it.  It means being able to distinguish between criticizing a policy to which one objects and criticizing the entire country and all that it stands for as somehow worthless.  But, of course, the ability to do that takes more than a selfish, childish mind.

Feeling entitled, needing immediate gratification means that one cannot make the fine distinctions between a particular demand and the country in which that demand is being made.  It means that one cannot appreciate or respect anything positive about a country that is not gratifying one particular demand.  If they don’t get what they want, they will simply despise the entire country, not unlike a child who will scream hatred for the mother who will not provide candy that is being demanded, never mind all the other positives that the mother may provide.

So, these America haters will despise all symbols of this great country and try to silence patriotism and ultimately the country itself.  They simply cannot understand that only by respecting all that this country stands for do they even have a chance to make the changes and obtain the gratifications that they seek.

From Accomplishment to Victimhood

In this country we used to value accomplishment.  People strove to do their very best.  Students wanted to excel and be at the top of their class.  People would compete to get the first place (not the participation) trophy. 

Valuing accomplishment means valuing the successful achievement of a task.  It has meant that Individuals were rewarded for doing their best and for doing better than their peers:  they received a promotion or a raise, they were admitted to the top schools, they were recognized as excelling due to ability, talent, skill, or aptitude in a particular area.  Generally, receiving recognition for excellence required individual effort and hard work in order to attain the level necessary for such recognition.

We celebrated accomplishment and as a result this country excelled.  That is, when individuals are striving to do their best they will not only fulfill themselves but will continually improve the areas in which they are working.  As such, their society and their country will also excel and continually improve.

Of course, celebrating and awarding individual accomplishment means that some sort of ranking of individuals will result; not everyone can be number one.  At some point this started to become a problem.  People’s feelings became more important than the accomplishments of others. 

At some point we moved from celebrating accomplishment to being ashamed of and condemning it.  Those who didn’t win the top prize felt bad and, instead of saying “try harder next time” we consoled their hurt feelings with things like participation awards.  We advised winners not to be too proud.  We started removing children’s games that had winners.  We shamed those who tried too hard, who wanted to rise above the mediocre to be the best that they could be.  We made excuses for failure.  And, instead of striving to be the best we began striving for mediocrity.

And, then, we created victims; we began celebrating victimhood.

Below are three charts that show the usage of the words “accomplishment”, “victim”, and “victimhood” between 1800 and 2010.  You will note that “accomplishment” has steadily declined while “victim” began a steady rise in the 1960s and “victimhood” from almost nothing made a steep jump to the highest usage of the three beginning in the early 2000s.

Now, instead of accomplishment we celebrate victimhood.  Perhaps this change started with the over-focus on the belief that by recognizing those who perform better than others we were somehow destroying self-esteem; that is, everyone was supposed to feel good all the time.  

When someone else won and was recognized for it, that became unacceptable because someone else must be feeling bad.  We had a culture of feelings and those feelings were supposed to always be good.  Yet, what this did was also do away with the true self-esteem that comes with accomplishment.

Suddenly, it was the victims who received the attention.  People began to proclaim themselves as victims in order to obtain a variety of benefits attached to victimhood.  

Clever lawyers created defendant-victims; students began to claim one or another hardship as the reason for their lack of academic success.  

While college admissions used to look almost exclusively at academic performance, the entrance personal essay began to take center stage.  The understanding now seems to be that the applicant needs to find some sort of victimhood about which he or she can write.  Even the once objective SAT now has added a very subjective “adversity score.”

Such search for victimhood became fertile ground for those who wanted to create identity groups, groups for which, in the mold of Alinsky, one could find or create a common enemy against a community. 

Saul Alinsky, in 1971, published the book Rules for Radicals about how to successfully run a movement for change.  His book set forth how to unite less fortunate communities for social and political power.  At its core it is a way to divide people into groups of enemies with those that are less fortunate on the attack against those sitting in a better position or a position in which the less fortunate would like to be.

Politicians learned to create a victim class – an identifiable group – whose circumstances they would promise to help and improve if only they were elected.  Once in power, more often than not, they maintain this group as some form of dependent class - dependent on the politician’s retention of power and therefore instrumental in keeping that politician in office.  The politician, determined to retain power, keeps reminding this dependent identity group that it is composed of victims who are in need of the politician; that is, their victimhood becomes of prime importance while any possibility of individual achievement is forgotten.

Since the 1970s, and with the help of identity politics, we have seen groups use their victim hood to claim their entitlement to many things that in the past may have been available to only those who demonstrated superior accomplishment in a particular area.  There is far less incentive for individual achievement and that results in a lack of motivation to do one’s best. 

Now, rather than looking for ways to achieve and succeed we look for ways to be a victim and hence be entitled to something for which we have not really put in a personal effort.  

Victimhood and its celebration creates a major shift in how our society functions.  Indeed, it creates a very different country than when individual accomplishment was celebrated.  

America as we know it cannot survive if we have only victims.

Entitlement

We throw this word around a lot, so perhaps we should examine it a little more thoroughly.  First, entitlement is defined simply as: “the fact of having a right to something.”  There are many people who feel they have this right to many different things.   There are people who can perhaps trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower who may believe they are entitled to be among the ruling class.  Yet, there are also likely some of the same heritage who live in trailer parks or worse and who are primarily concerned with the roof over their heads and how they will eat tomorrow.  Similarly, there are some people who are descendants of slaves who may live today in wealthy and tony areas of cities or suburbs while other such descendants may live in poverty and curse that birth right while believing they are entitled to what others born into better situations seem to have.

Who of the above is entitled to what?    Another word we like to use without any depth of examination is “fairness.”  Is it fair to provide entitlements to a wealthy person of color while denying the same to an impoverished white?  That is what happens when we base programs and entitlements on ethnicity, color, or race.  Is it fair that a white child is denied access to college scholarships or a young entrepreneur be denied access to grants and funding simply because of the color of their skin, even when without such aid it is difficult at best that the white child will find a way to attend college or to develop her business?  Is it fair that a wealthy person of color can apply for and perhaps receive aid, grants, and similar assistance denied to the white simply because of the color of their skin? And, if entitlements are based on ethnicity, how does that work in this age of ancestry DNA tests that can determine the racial mix of nearly all Americans?  A person seen as white may have a significant percentage of DNA belonging to non-white races; does that mean that person may claim that ethnicity and entitlements that go along with it?  What percentage will be enough? 

Beyond the above, there is a deeper, more sinister problem with entitlements, especially when entitlements become a way of life that is handed down from one generation to the next.  The definition of entitlements is “the act of entitling” or “the state of being entitled.”  (Interestingly, this word first appeared here in the early 1800s; was there no sense of entitlement prior to that time?)  The problem with entitlements is that they can become a way of destroying the human spirit or at least a way of creating an underclass of people who will be dependent on someone else’s power rather than their own for their well-being and perhaps their very existence.  When one is provided with what one wants, there is little incentive for working for that something.  With the expectation that one will receive one’s wishes with little or no effort on their own one is likely to lose respect for the things provided as well as for those who work to provide it.  And one will become dependent on those who provide the entitlements.  As a class of people they will become beholden to the power class that provides the entitlements.  This provides a way for that power class to remain in power and reduces the likelihood that the power class will receive challenges from those whom they are entitling.  It also has the potential to reduce the spirt of those being entitled.  It is a way of signaling that one is not capable of taking care of oneself, a concept that is in the end demeaning and a way of signaling that the entitled class is somehow less than the class doing the entitling.

A third problem with entitlements is that sooner or later everyone wants their piece of the pie.  Some tend to forget that the entitlements are ultimately funded by people like themselves.  Yet, if people are less industrious due to entitlements they will have less to contribute, via taxes or otherwise, to the entitlement fund.  And, as taxes increase to fund entitlements and the tax burden becomes greater and greater, more and more people will feel the need for entitlements just to survive.  Ultimately, the system must collapse. 

This is not a post that argues to completely eliminate programs that are designed to help people in a variety of difficult situations.  Nor does this post not acknowledge that each one of us is born into a different place and situation and that the situation of one’s birth may seem to place one in a more or less advantageous circumstance to begin life.  But, so do the differences in one’s intelligence and innate talents.  And the ways that one will be raised.  No two birth situations are the same and some are far better than others.  That is likely to never change; it is simply a fact of life.  What is important is that we not view or treat all people born in one type of situation differently than how we treat those born or placed in other situations.

What this blog does intend to suggest is that entitlements, especially those based on race, ethnicity or similar identity factors are unwise, unfair, and likely destructive.  It is also contrary to the values underlying our democracy and the American Dream.  While these “bourgeois values” have come under attack lately, the qualities of hard word, drive, individual responsibility, and the belief that one, with one’s own effort, can become the best one can be, are the values that have brought many to this country and that have allowed many to succeed in their dreams.  Is it really fair is to consider some people entitled just because they do not have everything that they wish for without consideration of the effort they themselves have contributed? Is it really fair to condemn some people’s successes, achieved through their own hard work, just because of their color or station in life?  What is fair, far fairer than identity entitlements, is to simply give each citizen the same opportunities and let them do with those opportunities what they will.  The results are likely to be different for everyone, but that is not a lack of fairness; rather, it is a difference in each individual’s talents, skills, motivation, values, etc.   Such results, while individually diverse, are fair and moreover will not create an underclass of people dependent on entitlements and someone else’s power for their existence.