In the old days they used to urge mothers not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys. Or "pick guitars and drive them old trucks," as the song goes. Instead, let them be "doctors and lawyers and such."
But I think the much bigger problem is letting your babies grow up to be the "little darlings" of the politicians.
The first people that grew up to be little darlings were the workers. And look what happened. Marxists used the workers to build the most oppressive regimes in history and basically enslaved the workers to produce useless products that nobody wanted. That's when they weren't starving them to death with the aesthetic projects to build model villages and model tank factories in Magnitogorsk.
The ordinary democratic socialists were different. They merely taxed the workers (or sneakily their employers) to the hilt; they took their savings and put them in non-existent "trust funds." All in all, they treat the workers as slaves on an advanced slave plantation. I mean that they treat the workers humanely, but as cogs in a machine.
And as for the labor unions, the once authentic brotherhoods of the working stiffs, they are reduced to being political pawns, stooges for government bosses, as the IRS union has recently demonstrated.
Who was next to be anointed as political little darlings? Women, of course. Women were shockingly oppressed. What they needed was the vote, government welfare, contraception, abortion, no-fault divorce, and careers in the workplace. Everything except love, marriage, and children. What's happened is that the lower-class culture has been demolished, as women retreat from marriage and men retreat from work. Women have become the cats-paw of politicians, to be serially terrified by some new threat to their safety or health.
Then of course we have African Americans, or "minorities." They have also become the little darlings of the politicians. But, of course, to be any use to politicians they must be mobilized, and mobilization takes hate and fear. So our liberal politicians use infinite patience and guile to keep African Americans terrified by a return to Jim Crow and police brutality.
The latest little darlings of the politicians are the gays. In my young days, the most anti-gay folks were the left. In Britain they used to equate gayness with upper-class privilege and decadence. Today, of course, the left equates anti-gayness with right-wing hate and bigotry in the heartland, and the Supreme Court is one decision away from mandating gay marriage nationwide.
Here's my problem. Any time that you gin up a political movement and use the government to advance your agenda, you end up becoming political cannon fodder.
Workers' rights: Wouldn't it have been better not to create a gigantic welfare state and to nationalize the social welfare aspects of labor unions, so that workers could themselves build the kind of protection they wanted and were prepared to pay for?
Women's rights: Is free sex and abortion and easy divorce really such a benefit to women? Doesn't it devalue love and marriage and children? And doesn't every woman you know eventually return to all three, usually after it's too late?
Civil rights: It's one thing to write a law to enforce racial equality. It's another thing to make race a factor in giving out the goodies to your political supporters. Politics is division. When you inject race into politics, you sow racial division and conflict.
Gay rights: It's one thing to stop the police from raiding gay hangouts. It's another thing to advertise that gay life is just a lifestyle choice, and gay marriage is just like marriage, and then force America to agree with you or else.
The problem with the "little darlings" problem is that in politics, nobody knows when to stop. In the end you destroy what you started out to create, because government is force. It turns everything it touches into a war, because that's what force is for. It turns a people into the opposite of society, which is people living in amity with their neighbors.
The leaders of the workers ended up using government to destroy the great industrial corporations in steel and automobiles. The leaders of the feminists ended up using government to destroy love and marriage. The civil rights leaders ended up destroying the hope of amity between the races. We don't yet know how the gay-rights movement will self-destruct.
Don't let your babies grow up to be little darlings. It will turn them into missiles of social destruction.
But I think the much bigger problem is letting your babies grow up to be the "little darlings" of the politicians.
The first people that grew up to be little darlings were the workers. And look what happened. Marxists used the workers to build the most oppressive regimes in history and basically enslaved the workers to produce useless products that nobody wanted. That's when they weren't starving them to death with the aesthetic projects to build model villages and model tank factories in Magnitogorsk.
The ordinary democratic socialists were different. They merely taxed the workers (or sneakily their employers) to the hilt; they took their savings and put them in non-existent "trust funds." All in all, they treat the workers as slaves on an advanced slave plantation. I mean that they treat the workers humanely, but as cogs in a machine.
And as for the labor unions, the once authentic brotherhoods of the working stiffs, they are reduced to being political pawns, stooges for government bosses, as the IRS union has recently demonstrated.
Who was next to be anointed as political little darlings? Women, of course. Women were shockingly oppressed. What they needed was the vote, government welfare, contraception, abortion, no-fault divorce, and careers in the workplace. Everything except love, marriage, and children. What's happened is that the lower-class culture has been demolished, as women retreat from marriage and men retreat from work. Women have become the cats-paw of politicians, to be serially terrified by some new threat to their safety or health.
Then of course we have African Americans, or "minorities." They have also become the little darlings of the politicians. But, of course, to be any use to politicians they must be mobilized, and mobilization takes hate and fear. So our liberal politicians use infinite patience and guile to keep African Americans terrified by a return to Jim Crow and police brutality.
The latest little darlings of the politicians are the gays. In my young days, the most anti-gay folks were the left. In Britain they used to equate gayness with upper-class privilege and decadence. Today, of course, the left equates anti-gayness with right-wing hate and bigotry in the heartland, and the Supreme Court is one decision away from mandating gay marriage nationwide.
Here's my problem. Any time that you gin up a political movement and use the government to advance your agenda, you end up becoming political cannon fodder.
Workers' rights: Wouldn't it have been better not to create a gigantic welfare state and to nationalize the social welfare aspects of labor unions, so that workers could themselves build the kind of protection they wanted and were prepared to pay for?
Women's rights: Is free sex and abortion and easy divorce really such a benefit to women? Doesn't it devalue love and marriage and children? And doesn't every woman you know eventually return to all three, usually after it's too late?
Civil rights: It's one thing to write a law to enforce racial equality. It's another thing to make race a factor in giving out the goodies to your political supporters. Politics is division. When you inject race into politics, you sow racial division and conflict.
Gay rights: It's one thing to stop the police from raiding gay hangouts. It's another thing to advertise that gay life is just a lifestyle choice, and gay marriage is just like marriage, and then force America to agree with you or else.
The problem with the "little darlings" problem is that in politics, nobody knows when to stop. In the end you destroy what you started out to create, because government is force. It turns everything it touches into a war, because that's what force is for. It turns a people into the opposite of society, which is people living in amity with their neighbors.
The leaders of the workers ended up using government to destroy the great industrial corporations in steel and automobiles. The leaders of the feminists ended up using government to destroy love and marriage. The civil rights leaders ended up destroying the hope of amity between the races. We don't yet know how the gay-rights movement will self-destruct.
Don't let your babies grow up to be little darlings. It will turn them into missiles of social destruction.
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