To rise to the challenge or to bring others down to your level?
This is a question I propose we use as a litmus test when listening to public dialogue these days.
My suggestion is that we are in a society fixated with equality, where equality works something like this: Those who are successful must extend a helping hand. Those who need a helping hand must not use this as an opportunity to rise out of poverty, religiousness, ignorance or disadvantage.
Rather, those who reach out to the helping hand are expected to tear others down to their level. It is a race to the bottom.
PC and trigger warnings protect the ignorant from rigorous debate and scrutiny in a form of reverse Enlightenment.
The act of terror is destruction over creation, fear and divisiveness over harmony. It reverses the peace dividend which capitalistic society requires as a foundation for prosperity. It drags us down and most certainly does not raise the perpetrators up, unless it is to a erroneous delusional reward.
The extenstion of the Welfare State does not provide hope, rather frustrated despair. It hinders the ability to create jobs and wealth that offer hope and future prosperity. It invariably draws masses of people who seek the welfare as a goal, rather than a safety net. It drags us down.
There are places where we see people and societies rise to the challenge.
Post War Europe saw many countries rise from the ashes, as did Japan, to become economic powerhouses offering prosperity in the latter half of the Twentieth Century.
China, after the dragging down and slaughter of intellectuals in the cultural revolution, embraced capital and dragged hundreds of millions out of poverty and famine.
Asian migrants are renown for arriving in host countries with very little and rising to great heights.
Many Silicon Valley businesses start in a garage and go on to great things.
The wealth generators truly rise up and bring others with them, serving a greater good for the society. Some politicians even risk their popularity for essential reforms which deliver tremendous long term rewards.
In the election ask yourself what the parties represent. Is this going to lift us upward to a higher level, or drag us down to a lower level?
Is this for the short term pain and long term gain, or to the contrary?
Does this decision strengthen our democracy or erode it?
Too often, I fear that the answer to the question is that we are not expected to rise to the challenge, rather to sink to to the bottom.
Worse yet, we are supposed to drag others down with us, so that we can all be equal in a socialist dystopia. Its enough to make a man go Galt.