Below is a response I wrote on another Blog. The initial post was about Snopes. A left wing supporter posted a comment about the the right-wing's view on success that was so wrong, I felt the need to set him straight. Below is my attempt to do so:
While your explanation of right wing and success is totally skewed and probably so deeply engrained in your brain that discussing the matter with you is pointless; I feel I must voice my own opinion anyway, because that’s what this blog is about.
Your words:
“I generalize about the right-wing when I say they seem to attribute success in business to superior personal qualities. Simplifying, by this I mean that the right-wing in general tends to assume wealth is necessarily the result of independent effort, honesty, and”good personal choices”, just as they tend to equate poverty with a lack of laudable personal qualities, believing as they seem to do that equal opportunity is there for all, and lack of success represents a lack of ambition, laziness and “poor personal choices”.
A right winger conservative response:
Achieving success in the business world does not automatically entail superior personal qualities. It does however point out that you have a brain. That you understand the workings of business, what it takes to make something work and how to make a profit. Unfortunately the left villianize anyone who can do this and want to take any profits away because it’s “not fair”. As for the “good personal choices” part; in a way, yes, but I’d revise that to say, “smart personal choices” along with hard work and dedication.
Your assessment of the poverty is so far skewed I am not even sure I can effectively respond, but I will give it a shot. You are where you are because of the choices you make. I was (for many many years) deep into the poverty well. I worked hard, but had nothing to show for it.. because I wasn’t working smart. I went to school and worked 3 part time jobs, but got nowhere. So I re-evaluated….. what I was doing wasn’t working so I knew I had to reverse course and try something different. I figured out my passion and I started making steps to live my passion. Did it happen overnight? No, but it did happen. My credit was shot, I had no money, but I had a desire and a plan. I made a list of what I wanted to do and I went for it. 10 years later my credit was great, my job situation finally got better and I obtained 2 degrees (with student loans which I am STILL paying for). In a nutshell, living in poverty isn’t necessarily a choice, but it isn’t my fault that someone is and while there are exceptions and special circumstances that fall outside the general population, everyone in America has more opportunity (unless Obama has anything to say about it) than most people in other countries. Because you are poor doesn’t mean you are a lesser person – it just (generally speaking here) means you’ve made some bad/wrong choices. I made some, then I changed course. My ex-spouse on the other hand continued to make the same choices and do the same things and he is still living just like we did all those years ago. Moving from place to place because we couldn’t pay rent, no phone, no insurance and borrowing money from family and friends just to get gas and food.
Your view of the right is skewed and has made you believe that everyone is entitled to what everyone else has, regardless of what they did to achieve it. That is wrong. Re-distributing wealth is a disgusting left wing philosophy that breeds feelings of entitlement and victimization where there is none.
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