Lucky?

Lucky?
 

Liberals, as you may know, pride themselves on their sophistication, their mental ability to see and understand things that others simply don’t have the intelligence to understand.  They are proud of the fact that they are intellectually a cut above the average Joe or Jane.  This is especially true if they graduated from an Ivy League school like Princeton or Harvard or Dartmouth or Yale.  They consider themselves to be well-read and have an erudite approach to things cultural and philosophical.  In short, they believe they are among the intellectual elite and therefore should have a larger say over how things are done and how the country is run than the average run-of-the-mill guy or gal.  They have a disdain for the wisdom of the common man and for the voters on Election Day.  

Even an intellectual won’t usually challenge the fact that the United States of America is the most prosperous country in the history of the world.  The facts are just too abundant to deny.  Even they can see that people aren’t leaving the United States to go to other countries.  Instead they can see millions of poor people from Latin America and other places around the globe seeking opportunity in the United States.

So what sophisticated, nuanced reason do liberals provide for such prosperity in the United States?  Their answer is that the United States is just lucky.

Yes, the United States is just lucky.  It’s just a matter of great luck that we have unprecedented prosperity.  We’re lucky to have vast natural resources.  We’re lucky to be a melting pot of people with talents and abilities from around the globe.  Never mind that many other countries have equally vast resources and diverse populations.  In a liberal’s mind, our prosperity is just a matter of luck.
Liberals reject the idea that it is the individual freedom that Americans enjoy and use that enables them to rise from the ranks of poverty to the heights of success.  They reject the free market system that has allowed Americans to become the most prosperous nation on earth.  No, their answer is that you and I are just lucky.

When liberals see Americans who start at the bottom of the economic ladder, with some climbing up the ladder of success and others remaining mired in poverty, their answer is that some are just luckier than others.

Such sophistication, such insight!  Clearly it had nothing to do with risk taking, innovation, hard work, or perseverance.

Ask a liberal why Ronald Reagan was so successful in defeating the Soviet Union and creating the longest continuing period of prosperity in the history of the United States.  He will answer, “He was just lucky.  The Soviet Union would have collapsed anyway and the economy was already on the road to recovery.  Ronald Reagan got the credit, but he had nothing to do with it.”  This, of course, ignores the fact that all the leading liberal economists of the time (including Paul Samuelson) were talking about how strong the Soviet economy was and how they would soon overtake the U.S.  

When a liberal says someone is lucky, they see that person as having an unfair advantage.  After all, in the alternate liberal universe, shouldn’t those who are the smartest and most intelligent receive the most privileges and economic rewards?  Why should a semi-educated schmuck like Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard, be rewarded with millions of dollars and vast acclaim?  Bill Gates was just lucky.  He didn’t earn his money.

In fact, liberals believe that no one earns their money.  After all, whatever success you have achieved is just a result of luck.

It is because of this sophisticated, nuanced, erudite conclusion by liberals that they believe it makes much more sense for them to make decisions for all Americans that will result in a more fair, a more just outcome for everyone.  After all, they are smarter and better than others.  Accordingly, they have the ability to make decisions for you about your health care, your job choice, the size of your family, and the education of your children better than you do.  

Make no mistake about it, some folks are blessed by God with greater strength than others or more intelligence than others or more drive than others, but this is not luck.  God blesses as He chooses.  In His divine wisdom He decides which talents and abilities you and I will be blessed with.  He is, after all, God, and may do whatever He chooses to do and we can know with complete confidence that every decision He makes is right.

I do not challenge the fact that liberals are often blessed with great intelligence and have learned much as they have risen up through the ranks to obtain their PhD.  I wonder, did they “earn” that Doctor of Philosophy degree, or were they just lucky?
Unfortunately, liberals confuse intelligence with wisdom.  They also confuse the gathering of degrees and information with truth.  When asked why liberals believe such crazy things, Bill Buckley replied, “It’s not that they aren’t intelligent, it’s just that so much of what they know isn’t true.”  And that, in a nutshell, captures the basic problem of liberalism—they know all sorts of facts and information passed along to them by other liberals that are not true.  

And, as far as wisdom is concerned, they don’t understand the difference between wisdom and intelligence.  They do not understand the fallen state of human nature, as our Founders did.  Instead, they see man evolving to a higher and higher state as a more benevolent and better person.  They must gloss over the pages of the daily newspaper or the news on TV.  As the Founders understood, man is not good, man is inherently evil.  That’s why the Founders sought to preserve freedom by limiting the power of government.  They knew the more powerful men become, the less freedom American citizens would have.

When you and I seek to become like God and rule over others, we reject God, we reject the source of wisdom.  As it says in Proverbs 2:6, “The Lord gives wisdom and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”  The term most often used for wisdom is simply commonsense. 

The idea that I or anyone else is able to run the lives of others better than they themselves choose to run their lives, is the original sin of wanting to be God.  What did the devil say to Adam and Eve about the tree from which they were forbidden by God to eat?  He said, “…God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).  Instead, Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden to live in an imperfect, sinful world that ended in their death.

The devil deceived Adam and Eve and his deception continues.  When we seek control over others because we think we are more intelligent or wiser than them, we commit the original sin that got us into trouble in the first place.  This is the underlying failure of liberalism and socialism and fascism and Nazism and communism and Marxism and all the other “isms” that seek to gain control over the lives of others.

We must resist.  There is no such thing as luck.  It’s just another deception.  Freedom is a gift from God.  It is by God’s grace alone that we have faith and freedom.  Faith and freedom set our nation apart from the rest of the world.  As it says in Psalm 111:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...”

If we want our children and grandchildren to enjoy the freedom and opportunity we have enjoyed, we must reject the sophism of liberals who offer nothing new, just the same old dangerous goal of a powerful, centralized government that will crush freedom, opportunity, and innovation and turn our land from one of opportunity to that of shared misery.

If we put our faith and hope in God alone, then, as the old song goes, His grace will continue to shine on our land.