Everyday's Hero

Not much has happened in the racial cultural wars since my last post--the Duke rape case is fading down the leftist memory hole and Hillary was unable to score political points against Imus. However, you can rest assured that we'll be back here again with the next slip of a prominent tongue (unless it's Robert Byrd's).

Still, I want to address my first commenter who stated that perhaps conservatives "should phrase it this way: don't ignore the past, rather honor it. Honor their sacrifices by using that freedom to live the kind of life they hoped their descendants would have."

I agree that this is essential, but to do this successfully, we need to address a fundamental aspect of leftism that would undermine this strategy.

The left often has trouble differentiating between what is and what ought to be (we do as well, but less pervasively). It is perfectly normal and acceptable to hope for the best, if one recognizes it as hope and not a description of what will invariably occur.

The Iraq study group claimed that Iran and Syria should want stability in Iraq. Employers should hire just as many people after we make it more expensive to hire them by raising the minimum wage. Workers should work just as hard even if they know it's almost impossible to get fired. The rich should spend just as much money investing in new businesses even if we tax away all their profits. Criminals shold stop stealing and raping once the harm they're doing others is adequately explained to them, we give them greater economic opportunity, and after somebody shows them how much they care. If I had all day, I could make this paragraph into an absurdly long one.

This clouds their view of all injustices, both past and present. For example, most of us agree that Jackie Robinson was a hero (and if you don't think he was a hero, this isn't the blog for you). Mr. Robinson endured some horrible injustices, but he also overcame them. The left's preoccupation with "should" emphasizes the former part of that statement, the right accentuates the latter.

Jackie Robinson should not have had to endured death threats, catcalls from the Phillies, and segregated hotel rooms. He should not have had to know in the back of his mind that every time he struck out or made an error that it would serve as an excuse for bigots to continue believing that his people were inferior. Mr. Robinson should not have even had to be a pioneer in the first place, for baseball should have already been integrated.

Unfortunately, Mr. Robinson had to endure hell to make what should be into what is. He could have decided to stay in the Negro Leagues where he could play baseball in peace. After he went 0-for-3 his first day with the Dodgers, he could have blamed the pressure and given up. He could have told the bigots exactly what they deserved to hear his first year and frightened reluctant whites into feeling even more threatened by him. He could have lobbied Congress for more legislation or sued Major League Baseball for creating a hostile environment (well, in 1947, maybe not). He probably wanted to rip off certain people's heads, and I don't think any of us could blame him.

Instead, Jackie Robinson decided to become a hero. Despite injustices that probably rattled him to his core, he did everything he could do (play baseball really well), didn't try to do what he couldn't (change bigots minds by yelling back at them), and transformed society.

Although it would be unfair to accuse the left of belittling Mr. Robinson's character, I find that they too often emphasize that which he should not have had to endure over that which he did about it. This is an important yet very fine distinction--after all, it was the filth around him that let us see his greatness.

We should not have needed a hero like Jackie Robinson, but we did. Today, poor blacks should not have to fight so many aspects of American culture to succeed, but they do.

Unfortunately, there will always be things that shouldn't be--terrorists, cars flying into lakes, screaming kids and bills we can't afford. We should rectify this as much as possible (kill terrorist, pay attention on the road, etc.), but no matter what we do, some degree of injustice will remain.

But the left seems to perpetually overestimate what's possible in the realm of eliminating injustice while underestimating the ability of individuals to overcome it. They seem to have unlimited faith in the ability of government to eliminate poverty while simultaneously thinking that an individual born into poverty is doomed to get pregnant at fourteen and sell crack.

Obivously, kids born into poverty are more inclined to act certain ways, largely because certain people will always tend to succumb to injustice rather than overcome it. However, without heroes willing to take responsibility for the harshness that confronts them, humanity would probably stll be living in caves. We are able to live in relative peace and harmony because farmers, philosophers, scientists, soldiers, and parents decided to ignore what was understandable and chose heroism instead.

This will always be the case, but will always be the case for some more than others. However, it is through accepting what is with the desire to make it what it should be that transforms lives: the role of circumstance is secondary. I believe that few of us want to have to be Jackie Robinson, but that a part of each of us would like to be him if we had to. Unfortunately, many of us do have to, but answering that call is what makes us alive.

Instead, the left continually tells us that things should just be better and that the government can make it that way. The government can do certain things (maintain equal justice under the law, enforce individual rights, etc.), but it can't make you approach your life productively. It can, and should, guarantee aspects of your right to the pursuit of happiness, but happiness is up to you.

The left implicitly denies this. For example, although I agree with the left's assertion that today's drug laws are unfair to minorities and believe that we have a duty to rectify this, I also believe that crack users would be unlikely to succeed even if crack were legal and free. The external injustice is real but secondary to the internally flawed behavior pattern. Perhaps we shouldn't be putting black crack users in jail, but people shoulnd't be doing crack, either.

Despite instinctually understanding most of this, black America has produced heroes who support the Democratic Party, a party that undermines the very mindset that makes heroism more difficult. I will explore this phenomenon in my next post, for these are the folks we need to reach first. We need to "[H]onor the sacrifices of the past" through honoring the sacrifices of the present. and reaching black American heroes is the ideal, but exceptionally difficult, way to do this.