Postponing Reality

by Thomas Sowell - December 27, 2008 - Washington Times

Some of us were raised to believe that reality is inescapable. But that just shows how far behind the times we are. Today, reality is optional. At the very least, it can be postponed.

Kids in school are not learning? Not a problem. Just promote them on to the next grade anyway. Call it "compassion," so as not to hurt their "self-esteem."

Can't meet college admissions standards after they graduate from high school? Denounce those standards as just arbitrary barriers to favor the privileged, and demand that exceptions be made.

Can't do math or science after they are in college? Denounce those courses for their rigidity and insensitivity, and create softer courses that the students can pass to get their degrees.

Once they are out in the real world, people with diplomas and degrees - but with no real education - can hit a wall. But by then the day of reckoning has been postponed for 15 or more years.

It takes Thomas Sowell to point out that many of the problems of a nation and a society are reflections of the illusions that are fostered to create that state. The illusion that we can postpone dealing with reality has been fostered by the corrupt education establishment in its continued destruction of our education system. Educators have spent two generations subverting the greatest nation ever created.

Now this educator based illusion is becoming the basis for governmental decisions. These illusions will have far worse consequences in the years ahead. The freedom on which this nation is based is being systematically destroyed upon the illusion that there is greater justice in allowing a bureacrat to determine what is fair than allowing competition determine how much comfort the world provides any single individual. What is fair and how do you decide this so that people, all people, will agree?

America has voted for socialism, the nanny state, governmental protection from reality, postponing the reckoning for our bad decisions about the future. Having voted for this failed economic system under the illusion that "real socialism" has never been tried, America is in the process of throwing away the great success of a uniquely great nation. Though we are postponing the consequences, through illusions as out of touch with reality as the sun rising in the west, reality will ultimately bring us down to earth.

By then we will be one more failed socialist state with no more liberty and justice than all the previous failed socialist states.