About twenty years ago, a woman came up to me as I was walking into a school board meeting, to enlist my support for her neighborhood’s quest to save an unused elementary school from being sold and the land developed. Wasn’t open space important? Wasn’t it better to have a park than houses? Didn’t it add to the quality of life?
Well sure. In a vacuum. And to her quality of life. But not to mine or anyone else’s in the school district who didn’t live in her neighborhood. And certainly not to the children who attended school in the district, or the taxpayers who supported the district, which needed funds to pay for the gold-plated pencils parents demanded for their poor, beloved babies in a district that already levied outrageous taxes. So many problems, on all ends, that needed fixing, but of all of them, the woman’s desire for a pocket park for her neighborhood was the least of them.
That’s when it became clear that the empathy card, when overplayed, could be a disaster. It’s not about people whose rights were lost to the tyranny of the majority, but people who made a very empathetic argument for why their personal interests were worthy of the allocation of scarce resources. It wasn’t that her arguments weren’t valid, but that society can’t accommodate everyone’s personal desires, and that meant someone wasn’t going to get what they want.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals thinks a monkey named Naruto deserves to enjoy the same rights as a human being. Is a monkey not as worthy of rights as a person? Do they not feel pain, love, happiness? Perhaps, but when animals get rights, we don’t get to slaughter and eat them.
We’re pretty far down that road already, and most of us take no issue with laws prohibiting cruelty to animals because it comes at little cost to us. Except for the disconnect when we slaughter them for food. It probably doesn’t feel good to get slaughtered for food, but humans eat meat (no, vegans, nobody but you cares about your pain because you’re nuts) and that means animals get slaughtered for our benefit.
A young Harvard student gave it his best shot to push a series of non-sequiturs to prove that the world owed him. After describing his efforts in high school to write about LGBTQ+* issues, and finding that others weren’t persuaded, he drew this conclusion:
That’s why I know that when conservatives and their centrist enablers criticize trigger warnings or student activism for impinging on free speech, it’s nonsense. Students of color have the right to a campus free from racism, and women have the right to a campus free from misogyny. All minority students have the right to a campus free from oppression. Those who criticize efforts to realize this truth—on the far right, at the center and center–left, and at Harvard—are wrong, and they are hypocritical.
Don’t try to make sense of it. There is no duty to be rational when one’s feelings are involved.
Conservatives contend that minority students have invented a “right to not be offended,” refusing to acknowledge the truth of pervasive and violent oppression.
In one sentence, the failure of Harvard to maintain any minimal standard of intellectual rigor in admissions is revealed. Yet, this line of reasoning is sufficient to make his point, provided one already accepts the premise that oppression absolves its victims of the duty to make sense.
After being censored and boycotted, I’m insulted that Harvard’s leaders identify student activists—this time around, students of color—as the real threat to free speech.
A kid of severely limited reasoning skills gets into Harvard, writes an op-ed that gets published in The Crimson, to argue his entitlement and that any disagreement is oppression as it silences and marginalizes his voice, and he claims to be censored and boycotted. This isn’t the Onion.
At the University of Oregon, students questioned and challenged the inclusion of a quote by Martin Luther King on the wall of the student union.
When the student union considered the question, some students asked, “Does the MLK quote represent us today?” The problem wasn’t so much the message, but the fact that it only focused on racial diversity instead of gender identity.
“Diversity is so much more than race,” said one sophomore architecture major. “Obviously race still plays a big role. But there are people who identify differently in gender and all sorts of things like that.”
But what about the monkey? Aren’t monkeys as deserving as you? Do they not feel pain, love, happiness? There is a laundry list of keywords that are used to justify irrational concepts, and they are effectively used to avoid rational scrutiny. Diversity is one. Mention it, and everybody swoons, because it is a word that is inherently good, and anything done in the name of diversity is, by definition, a good thing.
African Americans constitute about 12.6% of the population in the United States. They deserve to be treated as well as everyone else. They are not entitled to demand that America recreate itself to suit their desires. The population of LGBTQ+ (or however many additional letters, numbers and symbols you prefer to include) is minuscule. They too deserve to be treated as well as everyone else. They too are not entitled to demand that America recreate itself to suit their desires.
Women are not a minority in America. They constitute 50.8% of the population. They can pretend they’re marginalized all they want, but they aren’t. Whining about their misery doesn’t make it so.
Diversity, such that these minorities aren’t excluded from enjoying the benefits of America because of discrimination, is an entitlement under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Demanding that the majority allocate its scare resources for their benefit, the tail wagging the dog, is not an entitlement. It’s not all for one, no matter how much the one thinks it should be and they’re entitled to it because of their feelings.
When diversity becomes the cover for demanding that the majority acquiesce to the feelings of the minority, it’s no longer a good thing. Someone isn’t going to get what they want out of the world, and that is going to be, and should be, the minority. Distinguishing the negative, the denial of rights, from the positive, the entitlement to benefits, matters.
Someone has to pay for that pocket park, and that means the money won’t be available for gold-plated pencils, or that more money must be taken in taxes to pay for that neighborhood’s happy place. Someone will lose. It will be the minority, because you’re the minority. Allocation of resources is based on the greater good. You’re not the “greater.” You’re the minority. You don’t get to wag the dog.
It may not feel fair, but it is. It’s just not good for you, but contrary to the Harvard student’s view, you are not entitled to a world that makes you happy. Just one that doesn’t prevent you from accomplishing whatever it is you are capable of accomplishing within the limits of society because of discrimination.
As for the monkey, he gets nothing. At least we don’t eat monkeys here. And if you put him in front of a typewriter for long enough, he could have produced The Crimson article, but he still wouldn’t be entitled to the copyright because he’s a friggin’ monkey.
*LGBTQ+ is the iteration used in the Harvard Crimson article. The plus sign on the end is likely a microaggression, since the failure to give you your own letter diminishes your existence. If you have a beef over the plus sign, take it up with the Harvard kid. As far as I’m concerned, I couldn’t care less.
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The headquarters of the Texas Military Forces (National Guard) is at Camp Mabry, 375 beautiful acres near the center of Austin. Naturally, the developers were itching to give the state a pretty penny to develop this and get it on the tax rolls, and the state was ready to take the money and move the headquarters somewhere cheaper.
Naturally, the neighbors protested — the base was a great place for a quiet, contemplative walk or jog. The neighbors won that battle, but they were a bit careless in what they asked for — after all, it was, in theory anyway, a military base. After 9/11, the perimeter was clear-cut, a big fence was put in, and bright lights now shine into the neighboring houses.
The only thing that could beat this for schadenfreude would be if the court appointed SHG to be the monkey’s Guardian Ad Litem. SHG is a live-and-let-live kind of guy, but PETA would probably just as soon kill the monkey to get its own grubby paws on any possible copyright royalties.
It would be great if every one of us got to create whatever it is that constituted our own personal Utopia. And if that was possible, I would be all for it. But it’s not, so the resources of the many can’t be expended for the Utopia of the few. Especially if it’s a monkey.
Population increases, population decreases. It looks like we are on a downward cycle just now. What is the likelihood that will change? Which will cost less, minimally maintaining that school until the next up cycle, or letting the developers have at it, then using eminent domain finding a place to disrupt peoples lives, take their homes, buy some property at whatever cost inflation charges, build a new school at whatever cost inflation charges, a couple of decades down the road? No worries, the politicians have the answers. We just aren’t smart enough to understand them.
I wanna see the contract PETA had with the monkey. Did the monkey sign it? Was there compensation for the representation? There is something that smells like it needs flinging about this story, and PETA is in possession of it.
What’s interesting is that the potential demographics shift that could eventually mean that the school was needed again as a school was raised as well during the meeting. But the neighbors didn’t care for the idea of holding, but mothballing, the school either. They wanted a park. They didn’t get one, and the school was mothballed for the reasons you suggest.
That said, when the demographics did change 20 years later, and more space was needed for the kids, do you think they unmothballed the school? Nah. It was old and unsavory, lacking the amenities needed for a modern school, capable of accommodating the needs of today’s pedagogy, not to mention handicaps and gender fluidity. Plus, it had become a place to store stuff, and if returned to use as a school, where would all the stuff (that somehow managed to be store without a building of its own beforehand) go? So a new school was built, at huge expense, and the worst of all possible worlds happened. And everybody with kids loved it, except for the people who had to pay for it and didn’t consider the huge expense a fabulous investment in our children’s future. And the people in the neighborhood who wanted a park grew old and moved to Florida, to await their turn.
A kid of severely limited reasoning skills gets into Harvard
Tight!
Take note: this is the sort of intellectual rigor Harvard expects of its student. Go with it.
Yesterday, the monkey was given leave to make amends. It ain’t over until it’s over.
I just hope the monkey’s got deep pockets for attorneys fees.
He’ll just file bananaruptcy.
So if he doesn’t, will the court spank him?
I just had vision of that young man’s* letter being set in front of the people in charge of Admissions, them calling into their office, and saying “Mr. Waechter, it has come to our attention that you are a thundering moron, fit only to dig ditches or pump gas. Please collect your things and kindly bugger off.”
*For sufficiently low values of the word “man.”
Or give him a medal. Harvard.
“you are not entitled to a world that makes you happy”
Here, perhaps, is the crux of what’s wrong with this post. Yes, we are entitled to a world that makes us happy. And we have the right to work for it.
A black man, living in a society still harboring serious issues from generations caucasians enslaving and segregating blacks, might ask that the white people he knows not to call him a [nope]. Contrary to your completely arbitrary declaration, he has every right to ask this. He even has reasons, good, rational reasons for it.
You may decide that you have the right to ignore and refuse his request, and you do. And then the rational and ethical around you can look at you and conclude, correctly, that you are self centered, lazy, lack empathy and hate change. To you, what’s important is that you get to maintain your status quo, your comfort zone and everyone else be damned.
You say that everyone should be treated equally, but you make it very clear that this should come at no cost or change to the rest of society (you.) This is irrational. Bigotry is a real problem in society, ergo to solve this problem society must change. But you don’t see it that way. You see a potential injustice (except when you’re overtly lying and saying it doesn’t exist, like in the case of the marginalization of women in our society, which does in fact happen,) but your conclusion is that you sure hope those that are disenfranchised work that problem out for themselves someday, because you’re sure not going to do shit about it.
People have every bit the right to try and improve the world around them, to make it better, to make it one that will make them happier. Those fed up with bigotry and its trappings even have a rational basis for wanting these changes. You do the same, your whole, “don’t ask me to do anything,” attitude is your own sense of self importance and entitlement. The only difference is that it doesn’t make a better world and it isn’t rational. It’s just stubborn self interest, laziness, and callousness towards others.
You made it all the way to your second sentence before going off the rails! Good for you! Saying you are “entitled” to a world that makes you happy does not make it so. You can work for it, but you are not entitled to it. Just don’t murder all those innocent words for your infantile fantasy. They don’t deserve to die for nothing.
Have you noticed you don’t even procvide arguments. You just launch irrational and snide slights art people. Why aren’t we entitled to it? Why are you entitled to your version of entitlement! Do you even understand the term?
There’s nothing, “off the rails,” about the actual points I made. Try actal, rational arguments, not just sneering, unsupported claims that others are wrong. You really just come off as an increasingly angry, stubborn person yelling at the changing world around you and plugging your ears as to why your ideas are so weak and self absorbed.
Can you craft a meaningful argument as to why I’m not entitled to a world that makes me happy? Not obnoxious emotinal bluster, but a coherent, structured reason?
The rights to which I refer are based on the Constitution. Yours don’t exist. You don’t get to pull a right out of your ass, then demand I explain to you why it doesn’t exist. There’s nothing to argue about. You haven’t offered anything at a level of intelligence to make anything you’ve written worthy of discussion. You’re a joke, and so you’re treated as a joke.
Anyone who’s read the Constitution knows that the Bill of Rights specifically states this :
http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-ix
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
You’re a really shitty lawyer, and a terrible excuse for a thinker. And that’s not an insult, that’s the facts. The Constitution specifically stated that just because a “right” isn’t listed, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Anyone with any actual Constitutional education knows this. Half-assed morons who never read or think but just mouth off their shitty, uninformed opinions don’t. You’re the latter.
Think about that. You just proved, conclusively, that you don’t know jack shit about the US Constitution. You are flat out wrong, proven ignorant, etc. That’s you. You’re not cute, you’re not funny, you’re not smart, you’re not wise, you’re not informed. You’re just another mouthy, ignorant old person ranting because you think passing the bar somehow made you smart. And that’s that.
You’re not a good person, or a smart person. You can flip out and post all your idiot posts about how much you don’t care that I called you “names” and all of that, but what it all boils down to is you don’t know what you’re talking about. And you like hating other people. And that’s you.
Up to now, I thought you were a well-intended if intellectually challenged young man. But now that you’ve thrown your lot in with every group of flaming nutjobs in America, from the Sovereign Citizens to the Neo-Nazis, by claiming that the 9th Amendment gives you the right to create whatever rights suit your feelz, you’ve lost whatever good will you might otherwise have engendered by virtue of at least having your heart, if not your mind, in the right place.
Sorry, Michael, but now you’re just another flaming nutjob on the internet in a tin foil hat.
Do they teach you to write gibberish in critical theory class?
Sure. Those mad writing and reasoning skillz don’t come naturally, you know. Also, they give you a bag, from which you can pull out any entitlement you want. It’s magic. Plus, there are tissues inside for when you cry.
A world that makes me happy is one in which you are dead.
So, how do we make that happen?
Or, perhaps, do you see a problem with your idiotic world-view?
That’s unnecessarily mean. I get your point, but find a different an example, please.
A fair criticism, though I was purposefully going to for the most over-the-top example I could think of in order to illustrate the absurdity of his position, and the other one that came to mind (that was bad enough) probably would have gotten me an actual phone call from you involving lots of yelling lots of mean, triggering things at me.
How about “A world that makes me happy is one in which you pay me $1,000 a week for forever”?