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Journal bethanie's Journal: "You S.O.B! You did this to me!" 49

Journal by bethanie
Some of you will think me a complete neophyte for not having seen this before. But I just got it, read it, and was thoroughly entertained, and I have decided to post a link here, just to make sure that the other two "informed" people on the planet who hadn't already seen it get a chance to. (This one makes the other 1,547 junk e-mails I get from my Dad in a year's time worth it!)

So what is it, already? It's Neal Boortz's Commencement Speech, of course. Which was never actually delivered as such, but apparently has gained very wide distribution (more than the non-Kurt Vonnegut chain spam? Hmmm....)

In any case, if you are non-Liberal and have a few minutes on your hands to do some reading, I highly recommend it!

For the record, here's one of my favorite parts:

That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other - victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, "Look! He did this to me!" than it is to look into a mirror and say, "You S.O.B.! You did this to me!"

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

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"You S.O.B! You did this to me!" More

"You S.O.B! You did this to me!"

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  • In any case, if you are non-Liberal and have a few minutes on your hands to do some reading, I highly recommend it!

    Now why would you want to keep this piece only to those who would agree? :-)

    • I wasn't saying that Liberals *shouldn't* read it. I just wasn't recommending it to them. That would just be silly, and erode my credibility with them. (Or not -- I doubt that I have much credibility with liberal-types, anyway, being an obviously out-of-touch woman who has made the daft choice to stay home and raise children and care for her husband...)

      ....Naughty Lottie (looking forward to being Bethanie again)....
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Second the recommendation. O'Rourke is great. I met him at a book signing eight or nine years ago, and he was very personable. I strongly recommend Parliament of Whores for a very insightful look at our government.

      I've also seen a couple of books by Ben Stein lately, How to Ruin Your Life and How to Ruin Your Love Life. I have not read either one, but they look good.
    • Third recommendation. Albeit it was HBI who lent me some of his books. I use the term "lent" rather loosely since I probably still have some of them. While we are talking about books, Im currently "reading" John Adams, by David McCullough. Bit of a dry read, but definitely worth recommending.
  • So, here I am saying negative things to you about government. Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Oh yes, I know it's a necessary evil, but it is dangerous nonetheless ... somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

    The man's an anarchist

    Speaking of earning, the revered
    • Uhm...an anarchist generally doesn't refer to government as "necessary" (evil or otherwise). Being opposed to big government does not make one an anarchist. It is a big difference. Sez Me. A libertarian, military officer, and civil servant.

      He is correct about the 40 hour week. That is NOT the path to financial success. That IS the minimum to getting by. IF you CHOSE to value other things more than money (like I do), that is fine. However, he is correct. If your goal is financial success, it takes work, lon
      • Have to (sorta)disagree with you. The 40 hour work week is neither the minimum nor the maximum, it's an artificial maximum. The entire concept of an X hour work week is wrong. Rather you should work until you're done. If you're really passionate and aggressive this might be 60 hours, or 80 hours. If you're not, it may be less. Being more aggressive and having a better attitude pays off.

        But working more hours doesn't necessarily mean getting more done. Would you rather have the guy who can do everyth
    • The man's an anarchist

      Not anarchist, libertarian. Not anti-government, just anti-bloated and extravagant government. He isn't complaining about law enforcement, or legitimate government functions - just about government interference in individual lives: welfare, government-imposed healthcare, and the burden it thrusts upon others.

      The government will never make you happy,

      Exactly the point he was making.

      and you'll never make enough to satisfy your greed by crawling up the corporate ladder. Learn to w

    • He's not necessarily a corporate shill, even though it comes across that way. To be really successful at anything, you have to do more than 40 hours and 20 beers a week.

      Look at the top people in any field, sports, music, arts, and coporations. Their work is their life, 100%. That's why they're the best. They train, practice, study, and work harder and longer than anyone else. Talent is only 20%, the rest is hard work. That's for them.

      For you, maybe just enough work to let you eat and have shelter, a
  • I can't believe that *I*, of all people, have never stumbled across this.

    I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

    So much truth in such a small package.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Ack, I hope you are wrong.
      • Don't worry, the US is spiralling hopelessly towards corporate anarchy, not socialism. I can't see any possible way that the prevailing winds in the US could shift so dramatically back towards 'let's work together to make a better country' from 'fuck you and get the fuck out of my way'.

        --Dan


    • I'll also tell you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

      No right, perhaps, but there exist no intrinsic rights.

      I know that this is coming from a Marxist perspective, so let me ask this: is it reasonable to trade one's labour or produce? Is surplus value meaningful when it is lost the second that it is claimed for the worker, as the trade that gave rise to it can no longer occur? I think that an honest answer to the second question is fatal to Marxism.

      I think that instead, w


      • I know that this is coming from a Marxist perspective

        A reminder to myself not to presume too much...

        Just peeked at your /. homepage. My reply missed the mark; sorry.
        • 'salright. Oh, and other than shooting at the wrong target, your aim was right on. ;->
          • As you've friended me, I think that it's only fair to point out that I am a liberal [slashdot.org], although more in the British than the American sense. Also, I don't always support the US line, [slashdot.org] and favour more diversity in world influences, but not the elimination of American influence, by any means; I want other cultures to be able to draw from many influences as they develop.

            Marxism is one of my pet hates, though; I think that its ridiculous emotive ("historical") analysis ("hysterical" might be better) exploits s
            • Not a problem, I always skim JEs (if there) and posting history first. I go for interesting and well written. Heck, a number of my friends have Dean for Prez links in thier sigs.
    • No right to any portion of the life or labour of another? That's more of that "everyone for him/herself" bullshit again. Say, did you get to where you are by road or sidewalk or rail today? Turn on the light switch and had the bulb light up? Use any manufactured good you didn't make for yourself?

      If so, then kindly fuck yourself right off to Hypocriteland, Mr. Boortz. Jeez, what a dim bulb. If it weren't for cooperative and/or collective (!) efforts, we'd still be scratching around in Africa trying t
      • Wow...what a thoughtful reply. :-)

        To answer your question, I, like every other member of this society engage in freely (that word's in bold for a reason...) trading my time and effort for things I want, through the proxy of money. Nobody is talking about "cooperative and/or collective(!) efforts" being bad. The topic is forced and coerced efforts. There's a difference. Though leftists often miss it.

        Your screed about manufactured goods is a red herring. I voluntarily pay for them. Your screed about infrast
      • Sweetie, you and I are NOT going to come to any kind of agreement on anything whatsoever, so why are you bothering?

        Did I come across as someone who wishes to deny anyone the choice of anything?

        As for "collective" efforts -- no one is denying that civilization is based on people working together. Did you RTFA, or did you just kneejerk based on snippets quoted in the above replies?

        The objection is to the government acting as an agent to *force* me to relinquish what I have rightfully earned and redistrib
  • You need to lighten up and stop playing with GMontag and eglamkowski so much. If you're not careful, you might start liking that dipshit Imus. Go read my latest JE and look for the bit about a cute thing my kid did.

    Then get your ass in the kitchen and get a meal cookin'. Don't worry your pretty little head none 'bout politics.
    • Eh, I don't listen to Imus OR Boortz, for that matter. Don't worry -- I'm not going to go too political. It really doesn't interest me. But when Daddy sends me e-mail, I read it. Even if 99 times out of 100 it's crap.

      I "made" pizza for dinner tonight. Picked it up, paid for it, and served it up hot & cheesy, just like Hubby likes it. After that, made some toffee for dessert. (Sorry, no pie tonight.)

      Anything else, dear? Pipe? Slippers? Fellatio?

      ....Bethanie....
      I *am* the Good Wife.
      • My virgin eyes!!! Ruined... now I'll never find a man to marry me, thanks a lot George and Bethanie.
      • Anything else, dear? Pipe? Slippers? Fellatio?

        That reminds, I forgot to tell you that I used the *ahem* Happy Stick on the wife. And now that's how she refers to it.

        Now, how do I get her to fetch my pipe and slippers? ;)

        I have to say this whole healthy marriage thing is so against the national norm. What the hell is wrong with us? Shouldn't we all be divorcing or something? ;)
        • I used the *ahem* Happy Stick on the wife

          Well, obviously. (Unless you have a *particularly* friendly mailman...)

          In any case, glad to be of service. :-) The Happy Stick is a wonderful thing!

          Now, how do I get her to fetch my pipe and slippers? ;)

          Ummm... Have you tried *asking*? Seriously. A little give and take goes a long way.

          Actually I was exaggerating a bit. Hubby doesn't smoke, so no pipe. And Kiddo is the one who fetches him his slippers -- she'd get upset if I tried to interfere. So that lea

  • Some truth, mostly self-serving BS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Saturday September 20, 2003 @12:24AM (#7010278) Journal
    There's some truth to the quote referred to (it's too damn late to read the actual post), but...

    The choices we make can only be said to affect the person we are, not the situation we're in. We're forced to make choices every day, but we don't have any basis on which to make those choices. Everyone has a 'great alibi' - God (Jesus?), biology, history, destiny, or what-have-you - but really, we don't have anything to base our choices on. The choice in one situation that yields excellent results might, come a similar-seeming situation, result in ruin.

    Don't forget, too, that there are circumstances outside of someone's control. The man can go on about choices we make as much as he wants, but if your family is killed, it can be hard to 'choose' to be truly happy with your life and go on regardless. Things happen that we can't do anything about, and sometimes, it's just too much.

    What Iv'e read of this man sounds, to me, like a classic archetype - the 'If they're poor, it's their own fault' archetype. Obviously, if they don't succeed, there's something wrong with them. Nevermind that some people march to a different drum. A friend of mine was solicited outside of our favourite Harvey's a few months back, by a scruffy looking gentleman, for some changed. On a whim, he asked the beggar how much he (the beggar) made, on average, a week, and was more than a little surprised to find that he (the beggar) makes more than he (my friend) does.

    So between one man who's hard-working and one man who basically lives for free off people's generosity (or guilt), which is better off? Most people would say the man who works, but usually because he has stuff - a palce to live, for example, and food. But this scruffy gentleman has MORE money than my friend. For all we know, he might have a better apartment, eat better food, and own a nice car. Who knows?

    I don't buy this superficial go-go-capitalism crap. You can't look at someone sitting on the streets and say 'hey, that guy made some bad choices and he refuses to admit them, and that's why he's sitting on the street,' because he doesn't mind being on the street, and he's making over twice as much as I do.

    Maybe I should consider a change of career. Capitalism isn't exactly working out for me as well as socialism works out for him. Hmm...

    --Dan
    • I don't buy this superficial go-go-capitalism crap. You can't look at someone sitting on the streets and say 'hey, that guy made some bad choices and he refuses to admit them, and that's why he's sitting on the street,' because he doesn't mind being on the street, and he's making over twice as much as I do.

      Well in my experience a signifigant number of street people are mentally ill. Claiming this is their own damn fault is about as useful as claiming diabetes is someones own fault. While one's own choices
  • Relying on Boortz to explain liberlism is like asking a man to describe the experience of childbirth. He thinks he knows, that's for sure.

    Liberals fundamentally believe that one has the liberty to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities.

    Conversely, conservatives, as I understand them, prefer to support (and thus conserve) established traditions and enduring institutions.

    Neither position has a monopoly on virtue.

    I would caution my conservative friends against relying too much on the argu
  • That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He's there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life.

    So the rampant rate of untreated mental illness present in the homeless population is ... another choice? Shills like Boortz who love to simplify the world into black and white shades of Willingness to Work make me ill -- if he'd ever spent five minutes in a homeless shelter talking to some of the regulars he'd realize that the homeless run the g
    • Does it make me liberal to believe that throwing a little human compassion their way isn't wrong?

      Only if you're taking MY money to do it with.

      OTOH, it was the liberals who said that we couldn't keep the mentally ill committed unless they were a "clear and present danger" to themselves and others...Compassion comes in many flavors.
      • Only if you're taking MY money to do it with.

        So you give heavily to charity, then? If you weren't so heavily taxed by the repressive Liberals, would you? Plenty of government programs use YOUR money to do away with unpleasantries you'd rather not deal with directly, yourself.

        Personally, I'd love to see the government stop taxing and providing services for even just a week and see how many conservatives cry out about the injustice of it all.

        There's no market in taking care of those who have nothing.
        -j
        • So you give heavily to charity, then?

          Well, it's a straw man arguement you raise, but as it happens I do give to charities that I support. However, the issue raised here was being *forced* to give to charities that I don't support. But you knew that.

          If you weren't so heavily taxed by the repressive Liberals, would you?

          Wow, you're good at this straw man stuff. "Heavily taxed by liberals" never showed up anywhere in any of my posts (for the record, many "conservatives" are just as bad). To answer your
  • Thought you were pregnant.
    FWIW, man's ultimate responsibility is to himself.
    If I have the time and still have the urge later, I may write a little bit about where Marx REALLY was at.
    Usually stuns people.
    And makes people realise that Marxism and Socialist countries are two entirely different animals.
    Good post.
  • ...is my own fault? Because I have a problem seeing my own mistakes no matter how hard I busted my hump trying to make it through college maths? I don't know. I think some of us have natural limitations that cannot be overcome and lead us to where we are in life. My life is pretty comfortable and I work in with technology, so I don't really have much to complain about. But, I really wish I could have made it as an electrical engineer because it was what I wanted to do. I was just incapable of it. I w
    • Hrm. That's a very good question. And the whole issue of health-related matters and their effect on a person's life is important, too.

      But my take on it is this -- even if you have specific limitations, you are still endowed with the free will to make decisions for yourself. It looks like you're doing fine -- EE was too hard for you? You made a decision to stick with technology, and you're making a comfortable living.

      Sometimes one's circumstances *are* the outcome of one's decisions. Like people who have
    • Hm...You weren't a good engineer because you sucked at math. So instead of sitting on your hump, you made a CHOICE to do something else, and now your life is pretty comfortable...

      Did I get the essence of that correct? If so, you are a positive example of what Boortz was talking about. Your life is the sum total of the (intelligent, in your case) choices you make.

      Is it your fault (in the sense of blame) that you couldn't do the math? No. Would it be you fault if you had chosen, as so many do to go into w
      • I did say that my life is pretty good. But I'm not an electrical engineer. That's the main problem. I love electronics and circuit design. I've done quite a bit of hardware hacking over the years and have no problem understanding the schematics to build something or even making modifications and designing my own analog and digital circuits. However, since I had no ability to catch my own math mistakes, I failed math over and over and over. because of that one problem, my life is not what I would reall
        • However it is completely beyond my control to make any change that will now make me an electrical engineer....However, the main point I'm making is that there are many reasons why people DON'T have control over their own destiny and have to settler at best, or have a really crappy life at worst.

          However, it is NOT beyond your control to make the best of the situation. Destiny is a crock. *Very few* people face circumstances that will FORCE them to have a crappy life. However, many people CHOSE to have a cr
          • You didn't get to be an EE. I didn't get to be an astronaut either. Neither of us is collecting welfare because of it.

            True. It just sucks, that's all. Some people say life isn't fair. That's where I feel that it's my responsibility to make it fair for others. Hence I'm a liberal who likes to give nice people breaks in the hope that it makes like just a little more fair. Life doesn't have to be unfair if we all support each other.

  • I used to be a libertarian, and still have strong anarchistic tendencies, but I have in fact sifted to becoming more liberal as I have grown older. Why? I have always cared about others, but I held to a grand theory of freedom. That is, the free market, volentarianism, etcetera, and I refused to accept people as selfish; it was my opinion that by stepping into the public sphere, governement was in fact eroding our more generous tendencies.

    So why have I become more liberal (in the American sense)? Well
  • for someone who doesn't post about politics. ;->

    Oh, and the smooch was nice.
    • Took me completely by surprise, tell you what! I seem to be touching nerves lately, I guess. Everyone wants to talk about libertarianism and voice mail messages. :-)

      As for the smooch, you're earning more. I love to watch you argue, baby.

      It's true that I'm really not "into" politics -- but the Boortz thing just struck a cord for me. When liberals step up to the plate with their "straw men" as you call them, I have a problem defending my position. I just haven't spent enough time thinking & talking ab
      • If you give me my own night, I'll show you some other things I'm really good at. wink, wink, nudge, nudge, saynomore.

        The trick to dissecting thier arguements is to act as if they were actually TRYING to make thoughtful and coherent arguements. Then point out the 509 ways that it makes no freaken' sense. (You conclusion has nothing to do with your premise, you are contradicting what you said 3 sentences ago, etc.) And call them on thier attempts at "holier than thou"ism. They are used to everyone granting t
        • If you give me my own night, I'll show you some other things I'm really good at. wink, wink, nudge, nudge, saynomore.

          Promises, promises...

          Tell you what. You make a good showing on Saturday and we'll see what we can do for getting you a night of your own. ;-)

          ....Bethanie....

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