Pursuit (n.) The act of pursuing. 2. An occupation, career, interest, etc. to which one devotes time and energy.
Epiphanies, by their very nature, are hard to come by, so when one occurs, it is usually a welcome event, as it was when I had my most recent Damascus road experience the other day. This epiphany wasn’t of the same earthshaking variety that Saul of Tarsus experienced, but you take what you can get.
I was sitting at my kitchen table, enjoying a glass of iced tea while listening to talk radio; having my own private tea party so to speak. A female caller was droning on about the “ideal” Republican presidential candidate in her mind. I was half-listening until I heard her say something to the effect that her candidate must believe that our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are God-given and not endowed by the government.
The flashbulb popped.
Could all of our political differences come down to a simple word? The more I thought of it, the more it made sense. It may not be that the nexus of socialism’s ideas about economic justice have sprung from a misreading of the Declaration of Independence—much of it was in fact, rooted in the French Revolution--but it seems to me that much of their beef with capitalism can be understood by changing one word in the famous phrase above. Try this: re-read the phrase from the Declaration above but without the phrase “the pursuit of. What a difference that makes!
Suppose that we all had the idea that we have a God given right to happiness, not merely the pursuit of it. Now remember the phrase that follows the one above: “that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men….”
Isn’t that the goal of the socialist movement, to institute a government to secure the right to happiness, or at least their vision of it?
To me, this is at the heart of the dichotomy between the ideas of equality of opportunity vs. equality of results.
I had to laugh watching the Republican debate on Bloomberg TV. As the debate wound to a close, Charlie Rose became slightly exercised, because, due to an interruption, time was getting short and he appeared worried that the time for the debaters to answer his final question would be truncated. I watched the spectacle, thinking that this last question must be a doozy as he was so hell bent on getting it in.
When he finally got to it turned out to be the lamest of liberal queries. The old mantra that has been repeated time and again by TV hosts who would not dare ask the same question to a liberal.
I don’t remember the exact question, but it had to do with the level of income disparity in the nation and what they would of about it. I wanted to scream at my TV; “Where in the Constitution does it give the government the right to do anything about it?”
Here we are, after Reagan, after the tea party, after three years of Obama destroying the economy trying to create “economic justice” and still the old guard liberals can’t seem to get a clue.
As I watch the news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the pundits on TV trying to make sense of it, seems the only coherent message coming from the mob is that they are unhappy. Once again, I see people who seem to be laboring under the delusion that the government is somehow responsible for our emotional state.
In his landmark book What Happy People Know, Dr. Dan Baker discusses how to be happy as well as what causes us to be unhappy, which he calls the VERBS. He boils down the root causes that keep people locked in an unhappy state to four things: Victimization: The Idea that we are somehow victimized by others. Entitlement: Believing we are entitled to a certain level of happiness, whatever that means to us, just for being alive. Rescue: Hoping that someone will come and recue us from our problems. Blame: failure to take responsibility for our situation. A perusal of photos of the signs from Occupy Wall Street reveals a representation of these beliefs.
Victimization: (photo 31) They get rich, We get foreclosed. This sign implies a link between one person’s wealth and another’s poverty. Of course, there is no such link in a free market society. This is a rehash of the old myth that economics is a zero sum game. (photo28) Land of the Fees, Home of the Slave. While I agree that we are over taxed, believing one is a slave tends to mitigate one’s motivation. (photo 8) This Financial District is Responsible for most of the Poverty and Suffering on this Planet. Tell that to the billions of people who have jobs from the companies around the world whose stocks are traded on this street, and the millions of workers who’s financial future depends on what happens here through their IRA’s and 401k’s.
Entitlement: (photo 16) Wall Street is our Street. Being pissed off does not give one the right to invade someone else’s property. In an interview on Fox Business Tuesday night a “spokesman” for OWS called their strategy of trespassing on the property of rich people in New York City by going and knocking on their doors a “A perfectly legitimate tactic.” An interesting side note is that OWS is not on public property, but is enjoying the largess of Brookfield Properties, who actually owns the park. They are the apparently welcome guests of one of those giant corporations that they are so diligently vilifying. The irony seems to be lost on the protesters.
Rescue: (photo 28) Unfuck the world. Here is a request (to whom?) to straighten things out. The protester apparently doesn’t recognize, or seem to care that he may have a role in both the problem and the solution. Notice he doesn’t say, “Help Me Unfuck the World”, “Watch me Unfuck the World”, Let’s “Get Together and Unfuck the World,” or even “Hold My Bong while I Go Unfuck The World”. He wants some unspecified person or group to do it for him as in “You go Unfuck the World, I’m Late for My Nap.” He may retort that buy hanging out in Zuccatti Park, he is doing his part. I would submit that not much is accomplished by standing around in a park.
Blame: Well, isn’t this the whole purpose of the movement, to blame somebody else for their problems?
The protesters seem to be underscoring the reason that they are in the position they are in: Broke, unemployed and unwashed. They are severely lacking in problem solving skills. They seem to live by that old aphorism that briefly made the rounds in the ‘70”s: “If at first you don’t succeed, blame somebody.” Maybe they didn’t get the joke.
Meanwhile, the government, while tamping down on life (via Rowe v. Wade, drones targeting US citizens, whose only crime seems to have been a few internet rants), and liberty (viz., the EPA running amuck, homeland security and their constant efforts to undermine the first and second amendment), seems to be doubling down on happiness, (Obamacare, putative jobs plans, reinforcing that good old American value, envy, as in tax the rich, and homosexuality as a civil right).
Our ever more hedonistic and self-centered culture seems to indicate that Lenin was wrong; happiness, not religion, is the opiate of the masses.
The Point: We are not guaranteed happiness, just the ability to try to achieve it. The failure to understand this distinction leads to much of the misery of the left.
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