A rudimentary flaw in Democrat philosophy is that they strenuously reject meritocracy.
They prefer to live and govern by the way they feel.
Their sincere, unembarrassed, world-saving conviction is that everyone who lives in America is entitled to benefit from America’s abundant wealth, regardless of whether he lies in bed for days at a time or toils 17 of every 24 hours. Right down to cheering President Obama’s scheme to redistribute earned wealth to the all of the unmotivated.
Our country booed the liberals out of power in the House of Representatives last month because they became ill and shaky from picking up the newspaper and reading the same five words every morning:
“You should feel sorry for…” and a different group of Lord Almighty, Are We Victims? every day.
Such stomach-turning, saccharin sentimentality soon inures readers’ feelings against those occasional cases when sympathy is deserved. In your favorite news outlet, every day you will read:
• Feel sorry for the chronically jobless because they have been unemployed for two years. Lengthening their benefits to three years will toast their needy cockles during this joyous season.
• Feel sorry for the illegal aliens in Arizona because they are being closely watched, nerve-wrackingly, by authorities everywhere they go.
• Feel sorry for the middle class because they deserve tax breaks.
• Feel sorry for the tens of millions who do not have healthcare, even if they don’t think they need it.
• Feel sorry for the thousands of openly gay men and women who want to be candid about their orientation and still serve in the military.
Or, as the Los Angeles Titanic opened its second editorial in Saturday’s edition:
“All students deserve access to higher education and a prosperous future, regardless of their immigration future.”
There are at least three problems with this brassy, emotional, reason-lacking statement that is so loyal to the Democrat Party creed, Woe Is Us.
Because the left reasons almost exclusively with its bountiful heart, debates predictably are exasperating because one person is standing on the first floor and the other on the second floor. They speak over and around each other, one from the mind, one from the heart. When mind is pitted against heart, observers typically will award a gold star to those presenting the emotional argument because it sounds, it feels, so much better, like unending swaths of cool water washing over your entirety on a scorching summer day.
Last June, Cyndi Bendezu, a Peruvian-born college girl, project director of UCLA’s downtown Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, specializing in undocumented young people, stood before the Culver City Democratic Club. She made a compelling case for Congressional passage of the cleverly labeled Dream Act, which roughly holds that any child who is an illegal alien can gain legitimate status by going to college or serving in the military.
Ms. Bendezu acknowledged she herself is an illegal alien.
For those of us with an active pity gene, the rationality of supporting the Dream Act sounds unassailable. Yes, sounds. What about inspection? As constructed, if it becomes law, the Dream Act will be easier to fool than the Clippers because college does not mean making a commitment and regularly attending class. The way the Dream Act reads, a mere expression of interest in college activates this well-intentioned but nevertheless bamboozling law that is yet another piece of feel-good-about-ourselves Democrat policy. It is lovely, but you can’t run a gas station much less our country so that the left can feel good about itself.
The Titanic argues that “the reasons to support the Dream Act are moral, pragmatic and economic.” This is a hit ‘n run, PR, feel-good statement designed to enlist readers with no need for elaboration. Tellingly, the newspaper eschews a specific defense of the Dream Act, apparently on the grounds it is self-explanatory and only nosy people would demand validation. Lofty sounding but eminently unsupportable.
The Titanic reached into the dusty, cluttered closet of clichés on Saturday and fetched this bromide:
“Young people go where their parents take them, and it is unjust to punish them for being brought into the country illegally.”
This is a doozy of an assertion that extends all the way back to Biblical times, and admittedly is difficult not to embrace.
But, in a land of laws, someone must pay.
The left would have you believe illegal immigration is a victimless crime, which is easier to disprove than 2-plus-2-equals 5. It has horribly defaced our country in the last 25 years, although such a broad claim can be fairly contested by both sides. My liberal friends would say defacement is unrelated to the suffering of contemporary youthful illegal aliens, and that is much stickier to defend.
