Individuals Used To Matter

We old-fashioned types are pretty shocked when we hear crazy collectivist talk spewing out of what is at least in theory a mainstream media outlet.  We shake our heads and shake our fists and cry out in despair and confusion, “What the hell is going on here? What is wrong with you people?”

It’s hard.  It’s hard to understand what has happened to our country.  How have we managed to elect and reelect a man demonstrably uncomfortable with the constraints of our Constitution?  How have we devolved from the land of opportunity to the land of entitlement?

The scary results before us now are the fruition of many years of individual abdication.  We, as individuals, keep relinquishing our responsibilities.  Young adults wandering the streets today are the grandchildren of a culture that demands both rights and blamelessness.

Nobody wants to take responsibility anymore.  We could list examples all day long, but that doesn’t really help us to understand how we got here.

The devil’s in the details.

Even the smallest decision can resonate far beyond its initial design.

Older son learned to read early.  We naively expected schools to take this skill into account, but by the final year of his brick-and-mortar experience, we knew that would never happen.  In third grade, the slow and thorough application of “reading strategies” to standardized (and therefore lame) material was not only the norm but mandatory, regardless of a child’s reading level.

They have to go through this process, I was told.  Even if they can mechanically read the words, they won’t be able to comprehend the meaning unless we use these strategies to teach them, I was told by Educators Who Are Well Meaning But Shall Remain Nameless.

I might have bought this premise, too, were it not for my own experience.  I was a child once, and a good reader.  My 1st grade teacher noticed.  She told me one day, go to the 2nd grade classroom during reading time.

While my classmates recited aloud the latest 1st grade adventures of Dick and Jane, I went upstairs and into a strange 2nd grade classroom.  The teacher there informed me that her class was at P.E., and I was to read all the “readers” at my own pace.  The shelf of readers extended the length of one wall.

No one ever asked me to apply a reading strategy.  No one ascertained whether I was really reading, or just messing about and taking advantage of the situation.  By the end of the year, I had ingested every reader shelved on that wall.

Fast forward thirty years.  I proposed the same arrangement to a very kind and capable teacher, and she looked at me as if lobsters were coming out of my ears.  You can’t do that, she protested.  The schedule won’t allow it.

Right.  The schedule won’t allow it.

In other words, its not her responsibility.

Thirty years ago, an underpaid urban public school teacher didn’t think twice about taking responsibility for the needs of an early reading student.  The arrangement was probably concocted in the teacher’s lounge.  They probably didn’t even run the idea by the principal first.

Did this arrangement substantially improve my education?

I don’t know.

It sure feels significant, though.  It sure feels like proof that the individual used to matter.

But not anymore.

Spam, Spam, Eggs and Ham

Twitter is a wild and dangerous place.  I fell into one particular rabbit hole called #WeDemandAVote several days ago.  The seeds of this hashtag were sown in the State of the Union Address:

Next came a follow-up call-to-arms:  We Demand A Vote (but not a vote on actually amending the Constitution properly, mind you).

After that, I was alerted to the apparent use of spamming by gun control advocates using fake accounts to tweet on the WeDemandAVote hashtag.  I’ve been scanning and responding to these tweets ever since.

Many of the #WeDemandAVote tweets are clearly from real people; these folks may be Obamabots but they are not spambots.  Still, the excess of egg-avatar spam was too obvious to be ignored:

Twitter ‘eggs’ scramble to push Obama’s “We Demand A Vote” Gun Control Effort

Hey, Nice Try With The #DemandAVote Spambots

GOP lawmaker: Obama using fake Twitter messages in fight over gun control

I have tweeted an “are you real or spam” message to dozens of suspicious #WeDemandAVote tweeters, and so far exactly zero have responded to my inquiries.  A few real Twitter users have noticed my inquiries and vehemently denied the existence of spam, using that special unicorn logic: “well I’m real therefore all accounts are real.”

Uh-huh.  One of the “spam deniers” actually deleted his tweet after I sent a couple of examples his way and asked if he had verified them as authentic.  (I guess that meant no.)

After a few days, the egg avatars became less prominent on the #WeDemandAVote string, but the spam didn’t go away.  The spammers just got more elaborate, using older accounts and/or actual photographs.  Here is a likely candidate:

And another:

The good news is, as of today this spamming appears to have mercifully ended.  The only folks left on #WeDemandAVote are die-hard Keepers of the Faith, as well as some #TCOT patriots itching for argument.

Oh, bonus:  My diligent responses to the suspected spam tweets in the #WeDemandAVote string really really really annoyed one of those die-hards.  You know, every time a leftist is annoyed an angel gets his wings.

The bad news is, the agitators responsible for this astroturfing fakery have probably not quit.  The spam isn’t really gone.  It has just been redirected to new hashtags.

Like the hashtags promoting MSNBC shows.

Entitled

Most of us probably agree that Beyoncé’s lip-synching at the inauguration is, in the grand scheme of things, Not Very Important.  Way too many worse scandals and infringements upon liberty abound.

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

It stuck in my craw, though, so I gave it some thought.  If she was having vocal problems or scheduling issues in the days before the event, she could have cancelled her performance, or rescheduled whatever conflicted with it.

The article suggests that the decision was last-minute, making cancellation more difficult:  “the decision was made by Beyoncé herself, and might have been informed by her late arrival on Sunday, which didn’t allot her enough time to rehearse with the U.S. Marine Band.”

So, okay.  Too late to cancel.  Then what made her late?  Getting delayed by the TSA?

Probably not.

If Beyoncé didn’t feel confident enough to perform live without rehearsing, then couldn’t she have made it a priority to arrive in time to, you know, rehearse?

I have a theory.  I love theories.  Beyoncé chose to lip-sync instead of spending extra time practicing because she felt entitled  to that particular moment in the spotlight.  Moreover, she felt entitled for that moment to be flawless, without actually putting in the work needed to deliver flawlessness.

Ah, entitlement.  The idea that one has a right to be given something which should be obtained through effort.  It comes up a lot these days, doesn’t it?  It came up recently in my older son’s curriculum, in the book Little Britches.  This book is a memoir of Ralph Moody’s childhood, beginning in 1906.

In Chapter 21, a visiting girl explains to Ralph how “smart men like her father never did have to work hard, because they knew the world owed them a living and there were easier ways to get it than doing hard work.”

That evening, Ralph asks his Father why he didn’t try to do the same thing.

“He just stood there for a minute, as if he didn’t know what he was going to say, then he put the stool right down in front of me and sat on it . . .  ‘Son,’ he said, ‘I had hoped you wouldn’t run into anything like this till you were older, but maybe it’s just as well.  There are only two kinds of men in this world:  Honest men and dishonest men. . . .

Some men work entirely with their brains; some almost entirely with their hands; though most of us have to use both.  But we all fall into one of the two classes–honest and dishonest.

Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest.  The same God that made you and me made this earth.  And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need.  But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man.  Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.”

There you go.  At the root of the entitlement mentality is dishonesty.  It might be silly to theorize about whether this dishonesty drove the talented Beyoncé to pretend to sing live–such a small, inconsequential thing really.

Perhaps, though, this small and inconsequential thing demonstrates how much trouble we are in, as a culture, for the very reason that it is so inconsequential.  Beyoncé would still be sleeping on bags of money tonight, even if she had cancelled.  Her career would survive, even if her performance had been flawed.  Yet she chose to compromise her integrity for the sake of, what?  Appearance?  The spotlight?  And is it just me, or do we even notice anymore how easily people sell out their principles for very little pay off?

Oh well.  Maybe I should just adopt Hillary’s attitude:  “At this point, what difference does it make?”

Have a great weekend, everybody.  Thanks for coming around.

A Presidential Proclamation

As a public service, I thought I’d share one of the latest releases from the White House:  a presidential proclamation on National Stalking Awareness Month:

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 2013 as National Stalking Awareness Month. I call upon all Americans to recognize the signs of stalking, acknowledge stalking as a serious crime, and urge those impacted not to be afraid to speak out or ask for help.”

Ha!  We are called upon to recognize the signs of stalking?  Duly recognized and noted.

Happy New Year!

Here’s a gift.  Some common sense from Rand Paul.  Here’s to getting more of folks like him elected in 2014.