THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

HOW DO WE SQUARE OUR AMERICAN IDEALS WITH REALITY? | 2002-03-23

We don't.

If you have adopted some dumbass insanity and called it an "ideal," you dump it.

But when somebody says "Race doesn't matter" or "All men are created equal," you are supposed to say, "Yes, Master" and lynch anybody who objects. These are "ideals" to which reality and even survival must yield.

Maybe real crises will finally make us face the fact that this is insane. If it doesn't, there is no limit to how much we will have to pay for this insanity.

If our so-called Ideals prohibit rational discrimination, it is time to toss them out.

For in the real world, as Robert Heinlein pointed out

"The penalty for stupidity has always been death."