An Investment in Failure
They don’t come much wiser than Thomas Sowell. I’ve followed his column for years and am never disappointed in his insight and his clear and simple way of explaining whatever topic he is discussing. In his latest column, An Investment in Failure, Thomas lays out the problem that infects the very heart of so-called progressives: their desire to attack rather than to seek actual, sustainable success for those they claim to care about.
If the poor escape poverty, Thomas contends, they become “nothing” to the Left. Put simply, the Left’s success depends on the failures of others.
Failure, of course, is part of the human condition. We all experience it at times. Where the Left errs is in its attempt to remove the consequences of failure. Most people will feel sympathy for someone who has made a mistake and will hope they can somehow not have to suffer for it. The shoe, after all, could one day be on their foot.
But the Left takes this to the extreme. Failure on one person’s part, they believe, grants them the right to reach into someone else’s wallet to pay for the mistake. No learning occurs in such an environment – as adults are not so far removed from children as we would like to suppose.
Without consequences for failure there is no incentive for improvement. Yet a guilt-free, accountability-less society is the dream of the Left- a dream that will end in misery and ruin for untold numbers of people.
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