Hispanics—Republican and Democratic; and, the systematic injustice of liberalism

It is worth remarking that the Hispanics and other minority politicians who spoke at the Republican convention were people of actual ability and accomplishment, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R.-Fla) and Gov. Susan Martinez (R.-N.M.). (Of course I exclude the perky but worthless Condoleezza Rice from that description.) Which raises the question: what Hispanics of ability and accomplishment do the Democrats have? There are none. Because Hispanic Democrats are people who got where they are, not through ability and work, but through ethnic favoritism and corruption.

It’s the same principle I identified in a conversation with a friend years ago. She wondered at the fact that the literary feminists in the academy keep pushing worthless female authors, but not worthy female authors such as Emily Dickinson. I said that the very reason feminists are not interested in Emily Dickinson is that she is worthy. Pushing her would not advance their cause, which is to elevate female authors because they are female, not because they are good.

UPDATE, August 31:

Under the rule of leftism, ability is a mark against you; accomplishment is a mark against you; good character is a mark against you. Because the very purpose of leftism is to bestow advantages on those who have not deserved them, i.e., on those who are incapable, who have not accomplished anything, and who have bad character.

This is why the mere social safety net, aimed at helping citizens in difficulty, is not enough for today’s liberals. Instead, every conceivable and inconceivable entitlement must be granted to people who by any rational calculus should not be getting such entitlements—sex change operations for convicts; free birth control for every woman in America; life-time jobs for minorities who are incapable of doing those jobs; welfare and a vast “helping” bureaucracy for unmarried mothers who along with their children are permanent wards of the state; subprime mortgages for illegal aliens, and on and on and on. Modern liberalism is systematic injustice. Leftism is the political expression of evil.

UPDATE, September 2:

A day after writing the previous paragraph, I came upon a passage in Atlas Shrugged which makes an analogous point, though in terms of the bestowal of unearned praise and honors rather than in terms of minority group privileges. The steel industrialist Henry Rearden’s parasitic, malevolent wife Lillian—who symbolizes the cultural elite that despises the men of production even as it lives off them—says to him:

“If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake—and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.” (Atlas Shrugged, page 284-85.)

Is this not exactly what the left does when it gives privileges and perks and honors to people and groups who have not earned them, who indeed have done the opposite of earning them? When the left does that, it is not trying to “treat people fairly.” It is, as Rand points out, corrupting the very concepts of excellence, of worth, of beauty, of value. The left reverses good and bad. It calls gross injustice “justice” (or “social justice”), and it calls justice “oppression” and “discrimination.”

And have you noticed that the conservatives never call these special group privileges unjust?

- end of initial entry -

LA writes:

In the original posting of this entry, I spelled the poet’s name as Emily Dickenson. A reader sent me an e-mail, under the subject line “Typo,” informing me that the correct spelling of her last name is Dickinson.

I wrote back to him:

That wasn’t a typo; it was a misspelling. :-)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 31, 2012 03:40 PM | Send