Tough Love
So I’m watching this TV movie on TNT tonight, because my parents and aunt were, and it hooked me after only a couple minutes. I would’ve been inspired if I hadn’t kinda already made the decision to head down a similar road a couple years ago. This is what it’s all about. Not coddling and excusing the behaviors of kids but toughening them up, teaching them what they’re made of.
People often complain that libertarians and conservatives have no compassion. That we simply don’t care about the less fortunate. While I can’t speak for others, I do care. Thing is, in my admittedly short time on this earth, I’ve learned the difference between acting like you care and actually caring. The dichotomy is something I’ve seen in relatives, friends, teachers, mentors…basically anyone in a position to affect the long-term behavior of anyone else in a meaningful way.
In practice, it’s quite easy to tell the two apart. One type defines caring in terms of what they themselves do. “I did [blank] for them.” Or “I gave them [blank].” The other kind of person defines it in terms of what they get others to do. The most important people in my life have always been of the latter type. In one or two cases, it took me several years to realize just how important they were.
Which doesn’t change the fact that without them, I would not have taken the path I did. I would never have known what it was like to break your own trail, to clamber over the obstacles in my way, to find the meaning of what strength is. Without them, I would have trudged down an easier path, worn smooth by the countless number of feet that passed before mine, and I would be lesser for it.
As steel must be forged in the hottest of fires, so too must the human spirit. And while there is a danger that one can go too far, becoming as brittle as the hull of the Titanic, in my eyes the far greater menace comes from not being exposed to the inferno in the first place.
We accept that the immune system is strengthened by exposure to pathogens, that muscles only grow when stressed to their limit, that without gravity, bones do not grow strong. But far too many of us deny the importance of being pushed to one’s limits when it comes to personal growth.
The key to a child’s success is not their diversity training, their self esteem, or their ability to use large words. It isn’t in making them ‘feel loved’, or in the clothes they wear. It isn’t in being passed along to get a meaningless high school diploma. It won’t be found in a four year degree either. People will only realize their potential when their success is contingent upon their own efforts.
Perhaps my biggest problem with leftist thought when it comes to this issue is that it is a mindset that consists of nothing but excuses. Why one ethnic minority can’t match the success of others. Why one sex hasn’t achieved what the other has in various pursuits. Why children of the poor are unable to achieve what the offspring of wealthier people are able to. And, as in all things, some of these arguments have merit, whereas others hold so little water as to remind me of my youth in the Dust Bowl.
The best of these are nothing more than extenuating circumstances. They explain why some people haven’t accomplished what they are capable of yet. And while they’re somewhat valid in that context, they do nothing to contraindicate the future success of these people.
Yet what the Left tends to focus on isn’t the fact that these people have unrealized potential, but rather the aforementioned extenuating circumstances. Social welfare now encompasses 43.5% of our budget. The ghetto? As large as ever to these admittedly cynical eyes. Affirmative action has before my very eyes grown to encompass some recent immigrant groups while ignoring others. Exclusionary politics and who hurt who are the rule of the day in their minds. And while righting wrongs is a noble pursuit, it does little to change what Maslow called self-actualization. While it’s a useful term, Maslow’s framework itself is exceedingly flawed. Many of the greatest figures in history never had the trappings of comfort and wealth; instead they succeeded because they were willing to push themselves. On the other hand, every one of us can point to many, many acquaintances who rather than being enabled by their wealth and comfort were instead hobbled by it.
Rather than getting their hands dirty as Mr. Clark did and as I hope I’ll do myself when I get out of school, they treat these symptoms, willfully turning attention away from the disease growing within. Social welfare now encompasses 43.5% of our budget. The ghetto? As large as ever to these admittedly cynical eyes. They reward people for their poor choices, they remove the sting of failure from the inability to realize one’s potential. They act like they care, but they never make the steps to actually better the lot in life of these people. They never show people what they’re capable of. And they never demand they do it.
They seek to spare us from the flames, and in doing so leave us as useless as a lump of raw pig iron.
I completely agree. One of my favorite teachers in high school was my AP US History teacher. On the first day of class, he told us he was going to give us more work than we could possibly do, so that we’d be forced to learn time management. Given that the people taking those AP classes were the folks who had coasted through school for years, he was throwing down the gauntlet and telling us we’d have to work. I got a B in that class, and it was one of the best B’s I’ve ever earned.
A Heinlein quote is apt here: “Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
I’ve seen a lot of people who have never really been challenged in life, and never had to prove themselves. You know what happens when they reach adulthood? They walk into a buzzsaw. I was talking recently with a friend about how many people I know that are on drugs. Celexa, Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, Xanax, etc… These people had easy lives, and once they faced the real world, they needed to rely on medication to not fall apart. If they’d learned as children who to overcome difficulty, they’d be much stronger and more able to deal with life now.
Comment by Brad Warbiany — August 14, 2006 @ 8:23 am
A brief reaction to the previous comment first. In my 20 years of teaching, I would always start the first day by telling the students two things: They would be expected on average to put in about 2-3 hours out of class for every hour in (our classes typically met 8 or 10 hours a week). Secondly, I told them my goal was to reach the point where answered thier questions with “I don’t know that”. I could no longer help them with any of their questions. It was time to move on to someone else for the next phase of their growth.
As to your piece, I don’t think many could argue with it; it is a little bit “apple pie” anyway. Wouldn’t it be more ideal if we could stop diverting so much energy and angst from categorizing people into leftist, rightist, centrist, ghetto, pakistani, terrorist, ad infinitum, and get to work on the problems that put those words on our lips every day. People may think that’s a rose-coloured Pollyanna view. Until we move in that direction, we’ve got what we’re stuck with. All we can do is vie for who can pick the fancier words for complaining about current conditions. Let’s face it. All these views exist and always will. Now, what are we ALL going to do about it?
Comment by Rick — August 14, 2006 @ 9:21 am
Matt Perry’s head is obscenely tall.
Comment by intellectimpure — August 15, 2006 @ 1:14 pm
[...] Next, Indian Cowboy writes about the difference between showing compassion for the less fortunate and actually caring People often complain that libertarians and conservatives have no compassion. That we simply don’t care about the less fortunate. While I can’t speak for others, I do care. Thing is, in my admittedly short time on this earth, I’ve learned the difference between acting like you care and actually caring. The dichotomy is something I’ve seen in relatives, friends, teachers, mentors…basically anyone in a position to affect the long-term behavior of anyone else in a meaningful way. [...]
Pingback by Below The Beltway » Blog Archive » Carnival Of Liberty LVIII — August 16, 2006 @ 4:47 am
[...] OK so I’m not really a cowboy gives us his thoughts on Tough Love. I highlight this because it has expressed some of the things I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. I wonder why it is that I look at all my friends who are on various mood-stabilizing drugs for anxiety, depression, etc, and yet somehow I’m the stable one who doesn’t. The only rationale I can find is that I was challenged my whole life. I was expected to perform, and when I didn’t, my parent’s disappointment tought me lessons. I think that one of the crucial flaws about my generation is that too few of us were ever challenged. Too few of us have had to taste the pain of failure, because parents and loved ones tried to shield it from us. When you do that, you only make things worse. We accept that the immune system is strengthened by exposure to pathogens, that muscles only grow when stressed to their limit, that without gravity, bones do not grow strong. But far too many of us deny the importance of being pushed to one’s limits when it comes to personal growth. [...]
Pingback by The Unrepentant Individual » Carnival Of Liberty LVIII — August 16, 2006 @ 6:59 am
The difference between a libertarian and a liberal is really pretty simple.
We both care. We just differ in how we do it, and think the other side is full of shit. Liberals base their way of caring on Marxist philosophy, and how they would like to be treated (taking the “christian” philosophy of “do to others as you would have them do to you” to perverted lengths). Libertarians tend to base it on reality and history - what works, and what doesn’t.
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