The Natural Man

At the bottom of it all – “it” being the divide, today, between the left and the Right, at the bottom of it all is………us - Or rather our view of us. It was famously stated in the Walt Kelly comic strip “Pogo” – We have met the enemy and he is us.

To the Left man is inherently good, born as a blank slate – tabula rasa- and everything that goes wrong with him is the fault of the world – parents, schools,  the environment. If you want a good laugh watch the West Side Story song “Gee Officer Krupsky” clip. All of their agenda  is directed toward creating a perfect world in which basically  good people will not be corrupted and be allowed to bloom. This agenda is well intentioned but doomed (and it is dooming us) because it is based on a fantasy understanding of the world. People who used to rub snow on frostbite to treat it really believed they were helping the person- oops too bad your toes have to be amputated.

On the other side is the view that man is born sinful, the world is fallen and the agenda is to make the best of it.

Take for example, the welfare state and all of the entitlement programs of the “New Deal” and the “Great Society”  These do-gooder programs which threw money at problems actually resulted in destroying the fabric of Black Society. Look up the facts and you will be shocked at what happened to the black family as a result of these programs. Daniel Patrick Moynihan  (a Democrat!) wrote about it quite awhile ago. Thomas Sowell has an excellent book on the subject.

A lot is being said about improving US schools. Mostly Obama wants to – you guessed it- spend more money. THE ONLY STUDY ever done that found a DIRECT causation of improved achievement in academic performance found it was due to the kitchen table. Well actually, it was what happened around the kitchen table. A married mother and father sat around that kitchen table with their child and encouraged studying. This was found across economic, ethnic and social classes.

Hillary Clinton wrote a book: “It takes a Village to Raise a Child” – Phylis Schlafly responded: “It takes a mother and a father to raise a child and the village should mind its own business.” Amen.