|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
When I was ten years old, I got a trial with a Little League team, but I was cut by the coach just before the season started in favor of his 9-year-old son. The son wasn’t nearly as good at baseball as I was, but I understood the situation and accepted it without much fanfare. I figured at age 11, I’d have no problem making the Little League, and I’d be on some team for two years.
Much to my chagrin, at age 11, I wasn’t even considered for a team and went straight to what was called the farm team. This irked me. I had many friends in the Little League, and they wanted to know why I hadn’t been selected.
At age 12, the last year in which one can be in the Little League, I was selected by the Maple Hill Dairy team. This team had superstars who had won the crown the year before. They had lost a couple of players due to age but were still the best team on paper.
A Season of Distinction
During the 12-game season, I made six hits in 14 official at-bats, plus two walks and two sacrifice flies, for 18 total plate appearances. My batting average was .429. I didn’t know that this average put me in the upper echelon of team batting for that season.
When did I learn of my feat? During the season-ending awards ceremony, our coach was handing out trophies at the League banquet. He gave the first eight trophies, one by one, to players on the team. Then he announced that the remaining six were the pillars of our championship season. I was among them.
I had no idea. Apparently, neither did the coach until he had compiled the season’s statistics. In announcing my name, he said he wished he had understood earlier how well I had been hitting: he would have played me more.
His words were the highest praise I could have received following the season.
Singled Out for Merit
Today, if you attend a Little League awards banquet, the champions are given awards along with all others. Everybody receives an award for participation, much like what occurs in the larger society. Merit counts for little because the mentality today is simply participating, which means that you are worthy.
To hand out participation trophies is a sham; however, the same sham that’s taking place in many aspects of our culture. The Leftists among us are seeking to quash merit-based testing everywhere. Out with Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs), they’re racist. They’re sexist. They’re transphobic. Out with the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Out with writing an essay to get into college. Out with letter grades.
So it goes into too many aspects of society.
Ah, but you and I don’t want to live in a meritless basic society. I guarantee that you don’t want to be operated on by a brain surgeon who went to a medical school where grades were not important. You don’t want to fly in a plane with pilots who have not proven both in testing and in flight simulation that they are fully capable.
You don’t want to drive over a bridge constructed by an engineer who went to a school where testing was deemed to be worthless or racist, or biased. We’ve come too far in human civilization to resort to a time when anybody could pick up a scalpel and perform surgery or where anyone could construct a bridge because in the early days, perhaps, almost anyone had to.
Credentials matter. Academic performance matters. Competence matters. Demonstrating one’s intellectual capabilities is among the vital signs that you’re being served by a professional.
Whom You Can Trust?
What other possible criterion would you suggest in place of merit? Participation? Ethnicity? Time on the job? Having friends in high places?
With many activities in life, merit is not a factor, but these are usually personal and private, contained, local, and not forced upon the public. Suppose it comes to a life-threatening situation, public safety, public health, the orderly flow of vehicular traffic, the health and welfare of children, etc.. In that case, I’ll take the high-performance testers every time.
Sleazy Joe is so shallow, retarded, dishonest & corrupt that he proves the old quip:
[Question]
What’s the best argument against democracy?
[Answer]
A five minute conversation with your average voter. (Especially voters in Delaware.)
Affirmative action is telling people, usually coloured people, that they can’t cope without the help of white people. How is that not racist?
Every coloured friend of mine is financially better off than me nobody’s going to complain about that.
Nobody complains that there’s too many women in HR.
Nobody complains that there’s too many female teachers
Nobody complains that there’s too many women in the care industry.
Nobody complains that there’s too many women on TV adverts.
But when they hear that technology or engineering is mostly men then it is a problem, despite there being nothing other than desire stopping women from being engineers or technologists, they don’t want to do it.
Well, you must understand that “proportional representation” only supplies a floor. Never a ceiling. So if the NBA is 75% black it is just fine even though only 12.5% of our population is black. See how that works. If merit favors blacks or other “protected groups” merit is the way to go but if merit favors other groups (i.e., Asians and whites) it must be discarded to achieve unearned “racial balance” or “equity.” Or so we are told.
The VP Harris was selected based on her race and sex.
How is that not unconstitutional, not to mention discriminating against the majority.
There are examples where the rule of minority makes sense, that is when the minority has the highest education, dedication and morale values. But if it’s the opposite, it’s a formula for utter destruction of nations.
I know exactly what you mean and I see your point. But I would want the rule of law formulated by Judeo-Christian principles no matter the demographic stats.
What we have now is racial preferences. “Proportional representation” is an idea based upon the proposition that one race is so different from another that it needs a representative of the same ethnicity – an implicit assumption that ethnic differences are insurmountable.
Perhaps having a jury of peers of the same race is the only place race should be recognized, because individuals can hold racial prejudices. But there cannot be a judicial double standard if we wish to live under one flag.
I think the Jews have it exactly right. God has preserved them as a people because they never allow the foreigner / stranger / goyim to join them unless he becomes one of them and accepts them as his own (and vice versa). A lot of people argue about whether the Jews are a race. They are, even though they have assimilated many of the goyim. The Jews recognize Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as their fathers. Perhaps this is their small contribution to the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham – that he would be a blessing to the entire world?
Which means that if Americans don’t wake up soon, you will become defensive at the thought that “America has sunk to the lowest common denominator”.
Which means that the average IQ of our country will not stay at 100 but will drop to the Average Black IQ of about 86 to Ninety. It will be a slow slide as our educators become less intelligent, thus creating a downward spiral that very few will be able to figure out until Americans become so stupid they’ll become a danger to themselves and our society !!!
If you have ever watched the Civil War Documentary by Ken Burns (free on streaming services and excellent), you will be amazed by the letters written by “uneducated” young men fighting on both sides. Their vocabulary, sentence structure and power of rendering thought was obviously and vastly superior to our own. The documentary is excellent for many reasons, but the letters are a real slap in the face to us.
The old McGuffey Readers were primary reading material for elementary school children. They are still popular in the homeschooling community. If you know anything about teaching elementary and secondary children, you will immediately recognize these readers belong to a highly intelligent and literate people that has largely disappeared from our nation.
Such a great point on education in the mid 19th century and earlier. Yes, on the McGuffey Readers and the highly intelligent and literate peoples. Thank you.
Actually, the average IQ of blacks worldwide is less than 86, it’s 70 overall.
The trouble with this, and all similar arguments, is that it doesn’t really define “merit”. And more importantly, how we are supposed to recognize it. It tends to assume that grades and test scores are signs of “merit”. Well, that’s the system the Progressives installed, from Wilson to Johnson.
Frankly, I don’t see any evidence that even the brightest people are any good at recognizing others’ ability; like all the rest of us, they just reward those they like. The best possible way to choose talent is to put in VERY broad minimum criteria, and then choose by lot.
I know this will be very unpopular. But it is the actual historically conservative option.
Merit is apparent from the individual’s work, often accompanied by natural ability and creativity.
But people like Bill Gates, who may have talent in one area fail miserably in others. It is disaster to elevate tech wizards to statesmen.
We need to recognize that merit comes in many forms. And (horror of horrors!) different races and sexes tend to congregate in different areas. We need to allow and celebrate merit wherever it is found, by whomever possesses it.
Amen to the author…
Perhaps no places exemplify the need of merit better than the air traffic control tower and the cockpit. Both require a tremendous amount of knowledge assimilation, skill in 3-dimensional analysis in motion, on-the-fly problem solving under high stress, quick thinking, multi-tasking, etc.
The aviation industry has gone totally woke and manages to keep many of its smaller problems secret until huge disaster strikes. This year has seen many “diversity” incidents, involving minority and female pilots and air traffic controllers, whose natural aptitudes often do not congregate in the same arenas as white males.
This does not mean women and minorities cannot be excellent in air traffic control and piloting, but only objective standards of merit will reveal those persons.
Here is a horrifying video of what happened this year at the Austin, Texas airport when a black air traffic controller almost caused a collision between two large aircraft. It shows the radar, tracking and has the recorded conversations between the control tower and two aircraft using the same runway. At one point, the FedEx pilot ignores the tower and speaks directly to the other aircraft while the black ATC in the tower is SILENT as the two airplanes come within 60 or 70 feet of separation!
Excellent video with explanatory commentary by Blancolirio. The FedEx pilot is a consummate professional and fantastic pilot whose skill managed to avoid what almost became a major disaster with massive loss of life. My bet is the black control tower operator is still there, despite obviously being unsuited to the job, because skin color trumps public safety. Here is the video. Comments are interesting, also:
As a professional translator/editor (English and French) in the Government of Canada (a fully bilingual institution), I can just imagine, 20 years down the road, when merit (impeccable language skills) no longer matters, documentation and messages to the public are completely botched by individuals who got the job because of “other” factors, and society wondering why the quality of our languages has deteriorated to the point of being unrecognizable.
I don’t think that is far down the road…
Affirmative Action (legal discrimination) was, of course, started by the Democrat JFK and then expanded significantly by Democrat LBJ. Who, not coincidentally, started our welfare state by monetizing the single parent household that has destroyed the African American family in America; where now 75% of all black children are born in single parent homes. That, not “systemic racism”, is responsible for the educational underperformance of blacks and their over representation in our prisons. But, I digress. I am retired now, but worked my way up to an executive position in a billion dollar Company. And for thirty years, I was told by HR (now “Diversity officers”) that when hiring any candidate; if all the qualifications were equal, then I should hire the black, the minority, the woman, etc.. Thankfully the Supreme Court has very belatedly overturned this legalized discrimination but technically only in college admissions.
Now Biden’s DEI policies are “Affirmative Action” on steroids and are blatantly illegal discrimination calling for hiring whites last, regardless of qualifications. This needs to be overturned next as Biden has signed an illegal executive order mandating DEI hiring in every Federal government office and agency in the country. All of this rolls into the private sector and will completely destroy “Meritocracy” in America if it’s not stopped completely. I, for one, don’t want my doctor, my pilot, or my EMT or my grandchild’s teacher to be hired based on his/her/zi/zem’s skin color or sexual identity or sexual proclivity. Do you?
In a society that disses merit and rigor of preparation, those souls who want the best brain surgeon, or the best electrophysiologist will select the best prepared and prepared with the most rigor. To select based on skin color is neither the best nor the one most rigorously prepared. Selection based on skin color or based on the person coming from the lesser economic strata increases the potential for selecting themselves out of the gene pool. Thus eventually, the species will select itself out of the survival pool. Deservedly so.
Personally, after United Airlines announced they new selection criteria for pilots being skin color and/or lesser economic strata, i selected to not fly with them. Were i to buy a United Airline flight ticket, i expect the pilot to have the experience, rigor of thinking, aptitude to fly me through a terrible storm and to land the plane in a strong cross wind. If unable, i will take the train, thank you.
Natural Selection is selection by merit, that is, prioritizing traits that best enhance survival or advancement. Anything that emphasizes a different method for selection will eventually select itself out of the pool or group; therefore, it may be thought of as suicidal.
Humans who tweak the selection process by social constructs literally know not what they do; plus they are overly arrogant. They select out traits that would enable furtherance.
In fact, this phenomenon is notable now in various gov communications.
Our civilization appears to be devolving at various levels.
Big Tech speeds up the downward spiral.
The downgrading of merit in Amerikan society is but a manifestation of the growing neofeudalization of our culture. Those with the skills, knowledge, and merit won’t disappear, they will migrate to greener (more monied) pastures and become the servants of the elites who can afford their “merited” talents. The peasants (all the rest of us) will be forced to go to public clinics, policing services, EMT’s, pilots, surgeons, etc. who have become nothing more than gourd-rattling shamans who pretend to know something…but don’t. Rest easy, though. These neofeudalized experts will have checked off all the right boxes on their diversity applications. Don’t expect to live a long life in the future Amerika these crazies are advocating. Invest in mortuaries…they will be the next growth industry.
Unless the government will simply incinerate our bodies or use us as compost.
Or perhaps turn out worn out bodies back into protein to feed the masses. Dig out a movie from the early ’70’s called SOYLENT GREEN. Ancient entertainment but strangely prophetic.
Soylet green is people! I remember.
I was born in 1961, and having been raised by parents that were, in every sense of the word except by name, communist, I can say that the only merit that counts to them is a question of who is the biggest and best hater of just plain humanity. All else doesn’t matter and never will. All else is to be trampled upon. Bank it.