This message was delivered by an employer, invited to address a graduating class at a University. Who spoke and where is not important – but his message is ! He said…
You may not like to hear much of what follows, but you will remember this, especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. However, this does not apply to those who seek careers as professors or those who become government employees or who join the Judiciary…
It has been said, Those who can – do, – and Those who can’t – become professors. That sounds insensitive, but there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Prepare yourself to go into the real world, and do … meanwhile, the professors will stay and teach.
When you first get a pilot’s license, it is really just your ticket to learn. The same can be said for your degree or diploma…. your learning has just begun.
Many of you, just leaving college, consider yourselves liberals (small L) and are probably proud of your liberal views. You care so much, you feel so much, you want to help so much. After all you’re such a compassionate and caring person, aren’t you ? Oh my, you are so educated, above and beyond the common people and you know absolutely everything. Well almost, but starting tomorrow, the truth will begin to set in. Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast, including your own assessment of just how much you really know. So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay careful attention to the media, and listen to the words and phrases that proud liberals (the Left) use to promote their causes. Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases from those heartless, conservatives (the Right). The Left says … “I feel.” The Right says … “I think.” From the Left you will hear references to groups, The Blacks, the Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate and many others. From the Right you will hear references to individuals.
On the Left you hear of group rights. On the Right, individual rights. That about sums it up, really: liberals … “feel”, liberals … “care”. They are like pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. On the other hand, Conservatives think, and setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centred on the individual.
Those on the Left somehow feel that their favored groups have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Those on the Right somehow think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the Left. In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas, you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. Your group identity is now going away. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.
If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not consider yourself to be a conservative, rush right back to college as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. The professors will welcome you with open arms. Yes, they will welcome you, but only if you haven’t developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced before.
Something is going to happen then that is going to really open your eyes. You’re going to actually get a full time job! You’re also going to get a lifelong work partner. This partner isn’t going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn’t want to share in your effort, but in your earnings.
Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing a strange and diverse group of people; an agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child; an agent for a research scientist who wants to make some cash by answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist, but who just can’t manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market. Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, work ethic, but who wants a job at City Hall. An agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for foreign aid. An agent for multi-million-dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of any agent for their personal benefit.
That agent is our wonderful, caring and compassionate, oppressive government. You will be awed by the power this agent has. Power that you do not have, a power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has created its own legal power* to use force, even deadly force to accomplish its goals. You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself bluntly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal OTG – one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to. *(Luke 11.46 + 52 KJV) This agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, there is just no way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you can’t decrease its share of your income. Remember, it is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government, for government is inherently evil. Yes … a necessary evil, but dangerous, nonetheless. It is somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.
There are some ideas you need to get out of your head as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in an academic environment, but they always fail miserably in the real world. First is that favorite buzz word of the media, government and academia, ie – Diversity! You have been taught that the real value of any group of people – be it a social group, a management group, a union, or whatever, – is based on diversity. This is a favored Left ideal because diversity is based not on an individual’s abilities or character, but on a person’s identity and status as a member of the group. Yes, it’s that group identity thing.
Within the great diversity movement group identification, be it racial, gender based, or some other minority status. It means more than the individual’s integrity, character or any other qualifications. Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on, every single time you hear the word “diversity” you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess.
Secondly, you need to address this thinking you seem to have about “rights.” Nationally, we have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called “rights” in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses and universities. You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right – the right to a car for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.
Forget it. All you will have is the right to live on the results of 60% of your labor – that’s all !! You have no right to any portion of the life or labor of anyone else. You may, for instance, believe that you have a right to health care, but you cannot receive Health Care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time – his life – to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that’s his choice. You have no “right” to his or any other person’s life or to any portion thereof. You have no more right to demand Health Care than you do to demand Plumber Care or Electrician Care ! What else ? how about – the “right” that the Government takes money from others to pay for your children’s shoes ? or your toothpaste ? If you have a need, fix it yourself ! If you will not or cannot, then you have to find someone to fix it by some kind of mutually agreed payment, without force or threat of force.
You may also think you have some “right” to a job; a job with a “fair” living wage, whatever that is. You have no right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I am sure you would scream if some urban outdoorsmen (that would be “homeless person” for those of you who don’t want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money. The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs – the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn’t cost anyone else either property or time. It’s their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.
By the way, did you catch the phrase “less fortunate”, the urban outdoorsmen ? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it if you can. To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is “less fortunate” is to imply that a successful person – one with a job, a home and a future, is in that position because he or she was “fortunate.” The dictionary says that fortunate means “having derived good from an unexpected place.” There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.
If the liberal Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of “fortune” or “luck,” then it is easy to promote and justify their various income redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit. This “success equals luck” idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. High-achievers are so referred to as “people who have won life’s lottery.” They are making the big bucks because they are lucky. It’s not luck, my friends. It’s choice. One of the greatest lessons in life is very simple: “Use wisely your power of choice.” The bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He’s there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other – victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, society, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her actions and their resulting position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say … “Hey, Society did this to me!” … than it is to look into a mirror and say … “I am doing it all, my way”. The major key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.
Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school, whether or not to get pregnant, whether or not to hit the bottle, whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge repayments for that new car.
Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch TV tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block – some large, some small. Each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely unthinkable may happen to you. You could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, and dare I say, the rich.
The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, – they provide the brains and investments for the formation of businesses, businesses that hire people, businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.
Second, – they are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and even hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than envy. Envy is a powerful emotion. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: “The rich will pay their fair share of taxes”. The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more “fair.
You have heard, no doubt, that … “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” … Interestingly enough, government’s own numbers show that many of the poor are actually getting richer, and that quite a few of the rich are actually getting poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor … there’s one basic and simple reason. The rich keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that keep them poor.
Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor So, you need to know that under our government’s definition of “poor” you can have a $5 million net worth, a $500,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and $ million in your bank account, and you can still be officially defined as “living in poverty.” Now there’s something you won’t see on the evening news.
How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is “living in poverty,” government measures just one thing … Income. Regardless of how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas , or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings account while you write a book, the government says you are ‘living in poverty.”
This isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it? Do you Try this. The government’s own statistics show that people who are said to be “living in poverty” spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. Just remember all this the next time some professor or whoever tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics. So why has government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of “poor” is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.
Think about this – truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you’ll be unable to deal with life or the truth … so get over it.