It's a no-brainer
- Which one of the following two women is more likely to abort the pregnancy if the prenatal test reveals the fetus to have Down syndrome, or even be taking the test in the first place: the religious small-town housewife who at the age of 30 already has several children and plans to have more, or the urban professional who is going to have her first and only child at the same age?
- Which one of the following two workers is more likely to work harder and do a better job: the one whose job security in his union job is virtually guaranteed, or the one who is has to find himself work every morning and then prove his worth each day if he wants to continue there the next day?
- Which one of the following two ideological self-characterizations is more likely to receive a very negative reaction from the other people: the declaration of being a socialist, or the declaration of being a nazi?
All
right, no more bets. I certainly know how I would bet on each question,
and I suspect that others would too. Even though these bets are not
absolutely guaranteed to win, they have such a humongous built-in edge
that should in a long run nicely inflate your bankroll, should you be
lucky enough to find a place that offers such bets.
But I guess
that many people would be uncomfortable if they had to explain why the
answers to these three questions are so blatantly obvious in practice
even they really shouldn't be in theory, when you think about it. Or if
they had to consider the real-world implications of these near-truisms.
After all, weren't the urban liberals supposed to be against ableism
and discrimination, yet in practice they turn out to be the most
enthusiastic customers for eugenics? What future do the lumbering
dinosaurs that the unions have become have in the globalized world of
open borders? Why is it "cool" to prance around in a Che Guevara
T-shirt or to proudly announce that you are a socialist because you
"care", despite the virtually identical real-world track record that
both socialism and nazism had in creating unimaginable misery during
the last century?
Especially question #3 really grinds my gears.
In a saner world, the admission of being a socialist would be
automatically and instantly met with a reaction equivalent to the
admission of being a pedophile. After all, I doubt that even the most
prolific child molester ever managed to create as much human misery and
ruin as many lives as the average socialist apparatchik in the
countries where socialists actually gained total power for real, or his
intellectual defender and whitewasher in those countries in which they
didn't. So it probably would have been much better for the world in
aggregate if all of the twentieth century true-believer socialists had
become pedophiles instead. Which in turn should tell you everything
that you really need to know about socialism.
I don't think the answer to the first question is obvious at all.
Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights
Posted by Anonymous | 4:34 PM
I'd have a real problem with quesiton #3. Both political systems are dangerously flawed and have resulted in the death of millions of citizens of countries that professed to being run under those political principals. Both are essentially a statement of the needs of the state being more important than the needs of the individual. Everything else follows. How could one be better than the other?
Posted by homeboy | 11:22 PM
As a mother who has adopted two little girls with Down syndrome, I am very interested in your theory regarding the first question.
Posted by The Pajama Mama | 11:54 PM
homeboy: How could one be better than the other?
It is not, but for some reason, in practice one seems to be far more socially acceptable than the other.
the pajama mama: As a mother who has adopted two little girls with Down syndrome, I am very interested in your theory regarding the first question.
My view of human motivations tells me that the religious mother of several kids is far more likely to keep the Down baby, for several reasons. The least of which is not that leftists rarely inconvenience themselves by submitting their own lives to rules they demand others to follow.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 7:55 AM
I think many people see a difference between being a "socialist" and being a Nazi. There are degrees of socialism. There are socialist parties and leaders that have won honest elections and -- more importantly -- stepped down peacefully when defeated in the next election. There have been governments that called themselves "Socialist" that have respected their citizens' rights and not imposed a dictatorship of the proletariat. There has never been a National Socialist government that hasn't been a dictatorship.
I agree that wearing a Che Guevera t-shirt is not really different than wearing a Heinrich Himmler t-shirt.
Posted by Simon Oliver Lockwood | 10:09 AM