Competition and Meritocracy Still the Key for Success

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Competition for survival and success are inscribed in our DNA. We are born to compete. Humans who put forth more effort are more likely to succeed. Others are satisfied with less, act accordingly, become followers, and complain bitterly about the eventual outcome and their station in life.

Even animals in the wild compete for survival; some develop special skills that allow them to rule over an area or a pride, and other animals of the same species recognize and yield to their superiority.

But in the human world government, with input from the vaunted halls of academia, has passed laws, imposing societal ascendency based on skin color, ethnicity, and a certain socio-economic background, not necessarily on meritocracy.

“Meritocracy is a political philosophy holding that power should be vested in individuals almost exclusively based on ability and talent. Advancement in such a system is based on performance measured through examination and/or demonstrated achievement in the field where it is implemented.” (Wikipedia’s definition)

Merriam-Webster defines meritocracy as “a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement” and “leadership selected on the basis of intellectual criteria.” But liberals demand vociferously that “diversity” and non-Caucasians must be chosen over scholarly meritocracy in all fields of endeavor.

First used in 1958, meritocracy refers linguistically to the power of merit.  “An anti-meritocratic system would reward the undeserving.” Being undeserving could also be argued about nepotism and about those with seniority who may or may not be more meritorious than others.

A bogus “white privilege” created by academia is blamed for all societal ills and for the inability of certain groups to be in charge exclusively and for some individuals to succeed. In their twisted economic view, the choices that an individual makes in life, the academic and technical preparation for the real world, experience in a certain field, investment in human capital, should not count at all. The only things that must matter are race and gender.

When someone is admitted to college based on family tradition, the amount of money a family donates to an endowment, relatives and close friends, that is not merit, it is nepotism. When someone is admitted based on their race, ethnicity, or their socio-economic background that is affirmative action and quotas. It is certainly not meritocracy.

I personally prefer to be helped by someone who acquired degrees and skills based on their merit. I want to be treated by a doctor who passed exams without correction to his/her scores based on race, who learned his/her trade by being at the top of his/her class, based on merit. I want a real engineer to build our roads and bridges, not a community organizer. I want to fly on a plane built and serviced by someone who studied real math, not Common Core math.

Just because you cannot pass a science, math, or high school chemistry class but excel in community organizing or theater does not mean that everyone else should follow your communist “lead.”

You can’t build a society on Marxist utopian ideology, it has been tried around the world and the 100 million innocents who died as tortured and starved subjects of this tyrannical ideology are turning in their graves right now seeing the Millennials who are yearning for Bernie Sanders’ socialism and Mao’s communism.

You cannot survive with community organizing and gender confusion studies. If you don’t want to starve, others must be responsible adults to produce the food you consume, the lattes you drink, the precision electronic gadgets you use, and the cars you disdain hypocritically. Someone responsible must know how to build your houses to last, your yachts, your planes, your boats, your private jets, your computers, and all the things the duplicitous rich consume while telling us to downsize our lives to shipping containers in order to save the planet.

Some succeed in life based on genetic looks, genetic athleticism, inheritance, ethnicity, or the color of their skin, but others have to work hard to make progress on their own merit and ability.

Ours is not a “white culture of meritocracy,” as a course at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs seeks to change. It is a culture of hard work and success and it so happens that the majority of the population so far in this country has been white. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/10/university-of-colorado-colorado-springs-course-see/

As advertised in the proposed course at UC, indicators of “white culture” are “individualism, consumerism, meritocracy as an ideal, superficiality, competition, ambition, productivity, [and] extreme exploitation of labor/resources for profit.”

In this course, in which collectivism and racism are center stage, groups must learn to work together in order to “interrupt white privilege and racism in their immediate environments.” The organizers have created another fascistic venue to express insane and irrational hate against the western civilization that pays everybody’s bills, and against white people.

The socialism that took roots in Germany in the 1930s brainwashed the youth to implement their desires to restrict free speech, gun ownership, and other freedoms that interfered with their ideas of a dictatorship of the oppressed. 

Presently, schools and universities in this country have entrenched political correctness (PC) into our culture, forcing the masses to speak and behave a certain way lest they be marginalized, converting Americans into “idealized citizens,” a mirror of Germany’s “brown shirts.” If challenged on these issues, the PC crowd labels the challengers “fascists” when in reality the PC enforcers are the fascists.

In a column written on February 27, 1982, titled Susan Sontag Provokes Debate on Communism, Sontag is quoted as saying in a February 6 speech at Town Hall, “I would contend that what they illustrate is a truth that we should have understood a very long time ago: that communism is fascism – successful fascism, if you will.”

The same tactic was used during the Russian revolution, during the collapse of Venezuela, and during Pol Pot’s government in Cambodia – the ignorant were incited, the successful were blamed for their failures, and the establishment was driven out and replaced with a dictatorship of the lowest of the low who happened to be communist community organizers in good standing.

Competitors were murdered and a few lucky ones were driven out with their lives.  As a famous talk show host said on his radio program, doctors were made dishwashers, and dishwashers became surgeons. Societies devolved into chaos for many decades and mountains of skulls were built from the people whose opinions diverged from those of the young communist organizers.

How do we change the outlandish psycho-babble created and pushed by liberal college professors around the country, dangerous ideas and rhetoric that promote and incite violence?

The college course accreditation process would be a start. Credentials of insane and tenured college professors must come under scrutiny. Alumni endowments should cease until such time that colleges become again places of free exchange of ideas instead of the radical breeding grounds and nut farms they have become. As one reader said, "liberals are two clicks away from teaching alchemy, astrology, charms, and potions.”

Personally I am proud of who I am, of my merit, and of what I have achieved through very hard work. Although there were many variables that I had to address along the way, such as the absence of luck, no college tradition in my family, blue collar background, gender discrimination, economic destitution at times, I am proud to be white.

I cannot change and do not wish to change the melanin content of my skin any more than a black person can change their skin color. Our parents and God have created us this way.  But the color of our skin should not define who we are or who we can become. This country has so many opportunities to succeed, all we have to do is apply ourselves and work hard to be the best we can be. I and many others like me are proof of that opportunity.

People must remember that we are not genetically altruistic and humans thrive on competition not collectivism. Society progresses when individuals with unique talents and efforts are promoted based on merit, not on entitlements, quotas, and inferior skills.

If we want society to devolve to the lowest common denominator, then by all means we must continue the destruction of the freedom of speech through political correctness (PC) invented and dictated by tenured professors with a self-loathing complex and now imposed by society-at-large as the norm.

Highly adept at deception and disinformation, communist agitators use specific language and divisive means to promote their utopian agenda. The novice and the naïve are easily swayed by socialist rhetoric and empty promises. It is perplexing to see how droves of young white people hang onto every word uttered by their socialist guru, Bernie Sanders, a white man from the whitest state in the Union who got himself elected to Congress and mesmerizes them with the promised Western European socialism as the only hope for minorities in this country.

"White Privilege" is a Myth

West Indian Creole woman with
her servant c. 1780
Photo: Wikipedia

I was pondering the other day, how I came to be the lottery winner of “white privilege.” God made me in the image of a good Christian, compassionate and loving to my fellow human beings, and gave me certain tools for success that he gave everybody else, regardless of skin color.

I felt privileged that my parents worked hard and put a roof over our heads and food on the table. It was not the best in the world, but we survived. Nobody gave us welfare and, had we demanded something we did not earn and were not entitled to, we would have been told swiftly, “no work, no food.”

“White privilege” is a spurious construct invented by progressive academics who love to divide and categorize people into groups just so they can keep animosity and hatred between them in order to better control them.  

My parents always told me that, if I applied myself and worked very hard, I would be successful. Nobody made promises to me that life would be easy and success will just fall in my lap just because I was classified as “white” by university scholars and government bureaucrats.

The Constitution does not mention free college tuition, free health care, and other entitlements that Democrats classify as rights. I have the right to exist and the opportunity to pursue my happiness, health, and education, and nobody owes me anything based on my skin color.

If I work, I have money to eat, a roof over my head, I may have a car, and other amenities that can be bought, if I can afford them. If I want luxuries, I must work extra, get a better job, or forget about it. Happiness and satisfaction do not come from buying material things.

Now angry and violent lefties are trying to diminish my hard work by telling me that I did not “build” that, it was given to me because I have the esoteric construct called “white privilege.” As double talkers, progressives are really good at inventing euphemisms. If there is such a thing as “white privilege,” why isn’t there a “black privilege?” What about “Hispanic privilege,” “Native American privilege,” “Asian privilege?”

What exactly is “white privilege?” According to a website, “white privilege” is a “set of advantages and/or immunities that white people benefit from on a daily basis beyond those common to all others. White privilege can exist without white people’s conscious knowledge of its presence and it helps to maintain the racial hierarchy in this country.” By this definition, “white privilege” does not exist in other countries where white people live. Apparently we have “white privilege” as a “direct result of the disadvantages of other people.” According to this half-baked theory, even white people who are not overtly racist benefit from “white supremacy.” So “white privilege” is equal with “white supremacy?” https://www.mtholyoke.edu/org/wsar/intro.htm

Students cite the fact that “white privilege is not having to worry about being followed in a department store while shopping.” Perhaps if you shopped rather than shop-lifted, you would not be followed.

Violent and angry mobs riot, burn, rob people on trains, and hit people of a different skin color over the head in a sick “knockout game.” It is sheer hatred generated by their lack of a moral compass and success, taking their anger on innocents. Riots are a convenient excuse to loot stores in their own neighborhoods.

At the lowest point in our lives, white friends and I never looted or robbed stores under the pretense of “social justice.” We did not demand other people’s money, free college tuition, free health care, and other government forms of welfare. We took a second job, worked every day and part of the night because we had pride and honor, not bogus “white privilege.” I worked for minimum wage even though I had a college degree, cheap labor was not beneath me.

“White privilege” is “about thinking that your clothes, manner of speech, and behavior in general, are racially neutral, when in fact, they are white.” Behaving like a civilized person, speaking proper English, and behaving like a human instead of a savage street thug is not “white privilege,” it is proper breeding and having a mom at home in the first six years of your life, teaching you how to behave.

Black students bullying other black kids because they make good grades is wrong. They are not “acting white,” they are concerned for their future and have a plan for success. Wearing pants down your bottoms like jail inmates do is not proper dressing. Nobody wants to see your underwear in public. Using incomprehensible ghetto jargon is not a formula for success either. Communication in a common language that everyone understands is important.

“White privilege exists on an individual, cultural, and institutional level.” I cannot remember how many times I lost jobs to lesser qualified and lesser educated black applicants who were hired because of affirmative action quotas. How many better prepared Caucasian students could not attend a university of their choice because there are quotas set up for black people, Hispanic people, and people born in a “poor” state?

One Seattle liberal writer wrote in 2015 why “white privilege” exists.  http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/11/lessons-white-privilege-poc/

1.     “I Have the Privilege of (Generally) Having a Positive Relationship with the Police”

Could that be because you were taught to respect authority, especially the police, and how to behave in a polite manner outside of home? Yes, you have the privilege to behave in an orderly and respectful manner when questioned by police. How you choose to behave dictates the outcome of any encounter with the police or any other people for that matter, regardless of your race. If you are violent, recalcitrant, and armed, you will be treated with blunt force.

2.     “I Have the Privilege of Being Favored by School Authorities”

School authorities treat everyone by the same set of rules; if you choose not to follow those rule and become violent, then the treatment of you will escalate to another level; violent students at home or in the streets are violent and recalcitrant in school as well, defiant of authority, and must be treated accordingly. Schools hire security to help school personnel deal with such offenders.

3.     ”I Have the Privilege of Learning about My Race in School”

Ethnic studies are on the rise at all colleges and universities even though they do not assure a student employment upon graduation. Nobody is stopping you from learning about your specific ethnic group or race’s history and culture.

The problem for liberals is, most of the contributions to science and mathematics, even literature, have been made by the much reviled “evil white men.” That is a fact. There are some contributions made by other races but, generally, modern technology and science discoveries were made by white men.

Students are forced to learn about the Five Pillars of Islam, in an effort to convert as many students as possible to that faith. Whatever happened to the atheists suing over “separation of church and state?” Does it only apply to Christianity, not to Islam?

There is black history month; since the U.S. black population is about 12 percent, then, to be mathematically accurate, there should be about a month and a half of learning nothing else but about black history and the contributions made by black people to civilization.

4.     “I Have the Privilege of Attending Segregated Schools of Affluence”

Many white people do not have the privilege of attending the schools of their choice for many reasons – they cannot afford the expensive tuition, perhaps their grades are not good enough, or reside in areas that do not fall under that school’s jurisdiction. On the contrary, most “schools of influence” are segregated based on wealth and income and not race. Obama’s children attended a “school of influence” in D.C. even though they self-identify as black. If there is segregation, it is based on income, not skin color.

5.     “I Have the Privilege of Finding Children’s Books that Overwhelmingly Represent My Race”

Most publishers are liberal and tend to accept for publication books that represent their progressive stance. Books are written generally in a number representative of the black population in the U.S. You cannot possibly force white authors to write about something they are not familiar with since they did not grow up or experience the black culture.

6.     “I Have the Privilege of Soaking in Media Blatantly Biased Toward My Race”

It is hard to even dignify such a statement particularly today when the MSM has become the laughingstock of fake news, defending manufactured news which are heavily biased towards the Democrat Party platform, a platform that has failed black people for decades, keeping them suppressed and poor (see Detroit). Yet these people of color keep electing their corrupt Democrat Party representatives and senators to power. I don’t know many white people who take the MSM media seriously because of their “social justice” and “collectivism” ideology, both communist inventions which some of us have been victims of for decades.

If you are a criminal, the media reportage will generally cover up the criminal’s race or ethnicity, unless he/she is white.

7.     “I Have the Privilege of Escaping Violent Stereotypes Associated with My Race”

The writer makes the bogus statement that “White supremacists (who tend to be White) have perpetuated more terrorism in the United States than any foreign threat.” I suppose 9/11 and the jihadi movement never happened.

8.     “I Have the Privilege of Playing the Colorblind Card, Wiping the Slate Clean of Centuries of Racism”

He makes a good point that “race is a social construction based on physical differences.” However, he blames white people for using the invention of race. I have not met a black student yet who has not shamelessly benefited from his/her race when competing for scholarships, grants, college admission, jobs, adjustment to their entrance ACT or SAT scores, and other benefits not available to white students.

The concept of “colorblindness” is not good enough for this writer, we have to atone for our “implicit biases,” another bogus euphemism, claiming that we associate lighter skin to intelligence, that we give black children less medication for severe pain, and that we “prefer white-sounding names when it comes to school discipline, job applications, and government inquiries,” a ridiculous assertion, which is not true; and it is against the law to discriminate in such a way.

Many of us get our “white privilege” by going to work every day, sometimes to very unpleasant jobs and when sick because we cannot afford to miss the paycheck.  Others get “white privilege” by working long hours on a project, by studying hard on a test instead of partying with the boys, and because we take the hard road of personal responsibility without crying discrimination and racism. When we were told no, we never gave up and tried harder.

Because we have this imaginary “white privilege,” race baiters and their fellow travelers want reparations for slavery which, in some progressive opinions, had an important role in giving us today’s imaginary “white privilege.”

Slavery, gone but not forgotten, has been a justified stigma in the history of our country. Progressives are demanding financial reparations for slavery which is objected to by Americans whose ancestors were never involved in or benefitted from the slave trade. Progressive advocates fail to mention that there were also white slaves who built this country, they were indentured to industrial projects and railroads.

The Atlantic slave trade took place from the 15^th through the 19^th centuries with slaves from central and western parts of Africa who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders.

The Portuguese brought in 1526 the first transatlantic slaves from Africa to the Americas. They were sold to work in coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantation, silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, logging timber for ships, skilled labor, and as domestic servants.

The British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empires followed the Portuguese’s example and shipped slaves in cargo ships to the New World and to the Caribbean area where slaves made goods to be sold in  Europe. More than 12 million slaves were bought and sold; a substantial number died during the grueling passage at sea.

By the 17^th century slavery became a caste in which children born to slave mothers were slaves themselves and thus property.  At the beginning of the 19^th century, governments moved to ban the trade but smuggling still occurred. In the 21^st century, some governments issued official apologies.

According to historians, slavery was practiced for centuries in parts of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, long before the Atlantic slave trade. African states exported slaves to other African countries. The African slave trade was a source of slaves to Europeans and many Muslim countries. From the 9^th to the 19^th centuries, slave trades from across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean benefitted Muslim countries.

The volume in the Atlantic slave trade was larger than the African slave trade. The victims of the Atlantic slave trade came primarily from several areas: Senegal and Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Mozambique, and Madagascar.

Slavery is wrong no matter who practiced it, how, for what reason, and during what time. But to create racial strife in 2017 by claiming a bogus “white privilege” in the United States, one of the most tolerant nations on the planet, is wrong and divisive, particularly in an environment that progressives have termed themselves as “colorblind.”

We have many black people in positions of power in the United States, in business, education, in Hollywood, in sports; the federal government is dominated by black employees, and we’ve already elected the first black president who is now very busy overseas, bashing America and the current president.

 

 

 

The Three Americas of Your Dreams

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Michael Savage made an interesting and profound statement on his radio show that struck a chord with me because I believe it to be true, based on my past experience with socialism and communism, my present knowledge of crony capitalism, and my research.

“We have three Americas – the America that was, the America that is, and the America that will be.”

The Facebook generation never experienced the America that was; they never knew the correct history of the exceptional America of the past, they only learned Howard Zinn’s revisionist history. They just benefitted from its greatness and its accomplishments.  Their teachers have been telling them for decades that America was evil, racist, imperialist, and they need to be ashamed of being American, they must seek retribution for all the past wrongs at the hands of the bad white man who must have had invented “white privilege.”

Everything they enjoy, use and benefit from today, they owe in great part to the discovery, inventiveness, and entrepreneurship of the white men they hate so much. That is not to say that people of other cultures and nationalities have not contributed greatly to this country with their hard work. But not many invented things that make our lives so much better and easier today. Look how many white European men have received science Nobel prizes for their inventions and discoveries.

America that was is the exceptional America that so generously gave aid and knowledge to other countries in need, that built a successful nation that knew and was proud of its history, had a moral compass, was honorable, had stable families, and kept God at its core. America that was achieved unsurpassed greatness and, in that process, improved the lives of billions around the world, freeing an entire continent from the oppressing German National Socialists (Nazis).

America that is now is ashamed of its history, of what made it great, and people are afraid to express their feelings of pride because it is shameful and derisive to be patriotic; people are demoralized, have lost their decency, more than half of the country is on welfare or unemployed.

People who are in school know very little and are unabashedly unashamed that they know so very little. When asked simple questions that most foreigners can answer with ease, young Americans walk away with pride and a smile when they show their stupidity and ignorance, unable to recognize national landmarks, their own geography, famous Americans, their own history, and many rudiments of basic elementary education. But they can immediately recognize and worship pop-culture trash icons and recite sports statistics and worthless trivia.

Noah Webster was right when he said,

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty, and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen, who have wrought a revolution in her favor."    

Unfortunately, most Americans with a college diploma would definitely be unable to pass a high school literacy exam from the turn of the 20^th century, that is how dumbed down the American education has become by teaching to a test and lazily using calculators instead of their brains.

America that will be is yet to be decided. The electorate has two choices, go with one of the two communist candidates on the left, turning completely left to socialism and eventually communism or maintain the mixed economy of the middle with government socialism and crony capitalism.

It appears that the tendency goes toward socialism. Decades of brainwashing in schools, Hollywood, and the main stream media are finally paying off, politicians have enough domestic low information voters and imported illegal aliens to bring about their sought after utopian paradise in the vein of Venezuela and Cuba.

No matter what happens to the country, politicians will be part of the ruling elite while the useful idiots, including the media, academia, and all the fringe lunatics on the left will become part of the equally poor and miserable proletariat with implausible rights and demands that cannot be fulfilled in the real world of work. And they will have to labor when other people’s money will be gone and the middle class will become part of the dustbin of history, a blip on the radar of a formerly successful and abundant life which they squandered away by allowing their children to be brainwashed in schools.

Schools are not the only ones responsible for the creation of this entitlement mentality, an incurable societal cancer. The entitlement mentality started with the divorced single mom with children taken care of by the government largesse, a government that purposefully became daddy.

The entitlement mentality was exacerbated by two-income parents, who could not spend enough time with their children. To make up for this obvious breakdown and assuage guilt, parents started buying their children “stuff” which they did not need, thus creating an entitled future society of narcissistic people who felt that everything was owed to them free on a golden platter just  because they existed.

And old communist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton told them that it was their “right” to have health care, free education, free housing, free prenatal and postnatal care, free vacations, all at the expense of society, no personal responsibility whatsoever. It worked really well in the Fabian socialist nations of Western Europe - they are all bankrupt, financially and morally, fighting off too late or not at all the Islamist invasion and the failed multicultural “diversity” with their ill-placed tolerance.

America that will be, with a socialist and communist utopian agenda, will be muddled by disaster after disaster exacerbated by the already doubled national debt, now sitting at $19 trillion and rising, over $120 trillion with unfunded liabilities such as the Social Security Ponzi scheme, Medicare and Medicaid. This unpayable national debt cannot possibly be reversed no matter who the president is.

How do you undo the open borders policy and all the illegal aliens that have been flooding the U.S.? We’ve been told for ten years that we have 11 million “undocumented Americans,” who, by simple mathematics should have grown to 30 million by now, a sizable non-information Democrat illegal voting bloc, deceptively named “undocumented workers” to cover the fact that they are foreign nationals who broke our laws to come in, but are now demanding and receiving more rights than Americans have, in exchange for their illegal vote across the country.

They are changing the demographic face of America on a large scale plan and forcing bi-lingualism on us. They are already burdening the welfare system, schools, child care, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and the earned income tax credit system. How do you stop Muslim invasion? In the name of tolerance and their bogus contribution to America, they are allowed to change our laws, to introduce Sharia Law, proselytizing for Islam in schools across the country with the help of Common Core, in hopes of eventually taking over by sheer fertility, 8.1 children per family.

How do you undo Obamacare, the deliberate destruction of one of the world’s best healthcare systems in order to install government provided insurance? The socialist healthcare system for veterans did not work very well and thousands have died and are still dying daily, waiting to be seen and to be treated properly.

How do you overcome the weakened military? How do you overcome the Islamization of America? How do you overcome the destruction wrought in education by Common Core Sub-standards and by the State Department of Education? How do you overcome the destruction of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of building the Green, pie-in-the-sky, renewable energy of solar and wind? How do you overcome the debauchery and the loss of morality? How do you overcome the loss of faith? How do you overcome the infiltration at all levels of government of anti-Americans, communists, and Islamists who do not have America’s best interest at heart?

How are you going to reverse decades of indoctrination of our children into good socialists? How do you reverse the climate change industry? How do you overcome all the race-baiting, bigotry, hate speech, and white privilege rhetoric coming from the militant and violent left who has plenty of money to stage riots and destructive demonstration by young people addled by drug use? How do you reverse United Nation’s Agenda 21? How do you reverse all the spying on citizens? How do you protect American citizens who can be killed without due process?

The country has gone too far over the cliff. America that will be will not be recognized by baby boomers and legal aliens who immigrated to America for the opportunity of a better life, not for welfare benefits.

Copyright: Ileana Johnson 2016