On Fairness

The Empty Suit Known as Barack Hussein Obama likes to use the word "fair" a lot. He stipulates it is "fair" to ask the rich to pay more taxes when the top 5% already pay way more than half the total taxes in our already extremely progressive income tax scale. He and his fellow travelling Leftist ideologues like to argue it is "fair" to forgive all manner of legally entered debt for millions of people you and I never met - and force me, you, and more importantly, our children, to pay for it with out-of-control gub'ment deficit spending.

It makes me want to directly quote the great character Inigo Montoya from the great movie 'The Princess Bride' ...



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Actually, if the word means what most people think it means - a predictablly just outcome regardless of circumstance - it means something that is simply unattainable in this world, at least on a regular basis. We live in an unpredictable, unlevel, and therefore fundamentally "unfair" world. Justice is another matter. We can put official systems of due process in place that are designed to achieve "justice" - meaning measured punishment and/or reward. But, still, these systems and these measurements will always be necessarily imperfect in this imperfect world. Because they are man-made.

The problem with the Empty Suit Known as Barack Hussein Obama, and other Leftist ideologues, is they falsely believe mankind can construct systems guaranteeing "justice" and "fairness" for all, in this world. This is a unicorn fantasy, to put it mildly. And the harder they chase this fantasy, the more they fail to reach it, the more determined they become to manufacture it at any cost ... which inevitably leads to a "fair" distribution of "lowest common denominator" misery for all. Witness every experience of governance under the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Chapter 1: The state confiscates everything; Chapter 2: Nobody is left rich, but somehow everybody (but the Politburo) remains poor; Chapter 3: Unbroken misery and death for all until the Politburo is finally forced out of power. The only difference is degree in each case. They've refined it down now to crushing debt for our children, which is a lot different than Pol Pot's killing fields to be sure, but still way off the mark as far as being indisputably "fair."

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I, LibertyAtStake, have therefore done mankind the favor of reducing the definition of "fair" to a simple scientific formula that actually works in this world.

FAIR = ((stuff you don't control) times (stuff you do control)) divided by (the perceptions of others).

Final grade is subjective for each individual ... and if there is a grade giver, he or she is not native to this world.

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An example to illustrate. Tyrone and Damian are both born to the same crack addicted welfare queen. Tyrone joins the Crypts at 15 and is dead by 18. Damian keeps his head down, graduates high school, joins the Army, and eventually dies with an urban townhouse that he owns outright to bequeath his two children. On the same day Scottie F*ck-Up and Willard Do-Right are both born to the same captain of industry. Scottie F*ck-Up lives large and blows through the inheritance right before he dies at the ripe old age of 80, leaving nothing for nobody. Willard Do-Right lives a straight life, invests wisely, becomes even richer, and leaves behind a charitable foundation that stands for decades after his death.

Were the circumstances of birth "fair"? Of course not. What could you or I do about it? Nothing. Is it "fair" to you or me that Scottie F*ck Up blew through a huge inheritance? Of course not. How would any man-made gub'ment "fairly" confiscate his riches for better purposes without preventing Willard Do-Right's foundation from being born? It simply couldn't.

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All of which is why I think the wisest person ever placed into this world may have been the old mountain woman met by Inman, the lead male character in "Cold Mountain." The old woman nursed Inman the Confederate deserter back to health with hard-earned organic knowledge, and a philosophy that could be labeled stoicism, which could be boiled down to the philosophy of "it is what it is." This old woman captures the philosophy perfectly, in the movie, when she manages to lovingly slit the throat of a baby goat for meat while telling the animal it did it's job well in this world.

Still doin' the best I can with what God gave me to work with.