The same teachers, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers who served the honor student also serve the underachievers and goof-offs. Do they deserve some of the blame?

and under NCLB, we cut their funding for it. Beyond that under "merit pay" plans we will cut their salaries. In some scenarios we go to the extent of firing them all and shutting down the school.

Whether deserved or not, they are getting the blame, this is not even debatable these days.

Giving credit to the school staff for the relative handful of successes is a poor analogy to justify what the President said.

Let's face it, he gave the Repukes a major talking point with his remark, just like he did with the comments about clinging to guns and religion. It's not just Mittens and Lyin' Ryan who make gaffes.

has no problem assigning blame for failure, but blows completely past giving any credit for success. To him and Ryan success is individual, but failure must be shared, and somehow the fault of "government".

The truth is that success is never as individual as some like to believe it is.

There is no zero sum game with giving credit to the people and things that contribute to success. We never run short.

the view of people in general is that they are worthless low characters who would just sit around and do nothing valuable if left to their own devices. This is speaking of humanity as a whole.

Then there are perhaps three ways to categorize where they go from there; first, "the good ones that were raised right" - clean cut, strict upbringing, good grades, dutifully religious, and bound to succeed in whatever they do. And white, of course.

The second category is those who didn't get off on the right foot one way or another, but who got there butt kicked in the right direction and who became gainfully employed. So - working hard because they have to, paying the bills, not bad people (but best not to turn your back on them).

The third category is those who, left to their own devices, sat around doing nothing valuable until they just figured - fuck it - and became criminals, or figured some way to scam their way into free government money.

...so that's about how I hear the "three kinds of people" described by RW associates. The people in the first category are both born and made, the proper rulers and leaders, and any teabagger thinks himself only a lottery ticket way from joining the ranks of the fortunate. The second and third categories are everyone else, never to be trusted entirely and only valuable depending on how useful or useless they makes themselves.

Quakers were having this argument with them some 300+ years ago. (we are still at it, but there are fewer of us and more of them now)

1. "Hopeless sinners"

A strongly held puritan concept that mankind is depraved from birth from "original sin". This translates / updates nicely as you put it: "the view of people in general is that they are worthless low characters who would just sit around and do nothing valuable if left to their own devices. This is speaking of humanity as a whole."

2. The "elect"

A Calvinist concept that some are chosen - predestined at birth to be favored by God This updates nicely as you put it: "the good ones that were raised right" - clean cut, strict upbringing, good grades, dutifully religious, and bound to succeed in whatever they do. And white, of course.

3. The prosperity gospel / Puritan work ethic

People who are seeking "justification" (of their status in the elect). As you put it: "The second category is those who didn't get off on the right foot one way or another, but who got there butt kicked in the right direction and who became gainfully employed. So - working hard because they have to, paying the bills, not bad people" These folks are always seeking proof of status in the elect through hard work and material success, and they rarely if ever find it. There were a great many disaffected Puritans, some became Quakers.

This stuff has run through the American mythos for our entire history, on very rare occasions we have risen above it. These occasions are unfortunately short lived.

Last edited Mon Aug 13, 2012, 11:29 PM - Edit history (1)

who is a democrat and believes that people are basically good, trustworthy, hard-working if given the chance, and generous if they are able.

If the occasion comes up where we hear someone has done something rotten or behaved badly, then it becomes something like "see, that's where my dad would think people are all so good and this guy must have had something push him over the edge. Me, I'd only have to look at him to see he was no good from the beginning. That's just how people are".

on edit - to be more to the point - though I was raised a catholic myself, we were taught as kids the all people are created equal. We always had a lot of family around, and I think we were all raised the same way; I know I based all of my thinking in adolescence on the basic premise of all people having the same potentials and the same essential human nature, whether that is good or bad. The calvinist or religious origins of the converse view I hadn't thought of, but it does make a lot of sense, though my family seems to have missed out on that bit of misanthropy.