The National Organization for Women (NOW) is a large organization, with chapters in all fifty states, and hundreds of thousands of members. The National Organization of Women has an annual budget of around $4 million. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is even larger, with an annual budget of almost $28 million, and a half million members. Both of these organizations have a large number of full-time and volunteer employees, and both spend a great deal of time lobbying Congress. Both spend a great deal of time in the news, organizing events, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the country, to advance their causes.
Imagine a tomorrow where women and people of color were truly, fully equal to white men. Would the National Organization for Women’s board of directors vote to dissolve, and all go home unemployed? Would the NAACP disband, or would they find other causes to fight for? What would those causes be?
One answer is to make problems up, which can be done by using statistics poorly. As an example, women today make about twenty percent less, on average, than do men, which is a statistic the National Organization for Women references constantly. What the National Organization for Women does not like to mention is that women also work fewer hours, on average, than do men, and that women often take a significant amount of time off from their careers once they have children. When pressed, the National Organization of Women will change to statistics that look at only unmarried women, comparing them to men, and will concede that while the gap does close significantly there is still a gap. What the National Organization for Women does not like to mention is that the term ‘unmarried women’ includes both women who have never been married, as well as women who may have been married for many years but no longer are.
When we want to compare groups, it is important to compare like groups. Thomas Sowell, for example, compared women who had never been married, to men who had never been married, and found that women make, on average, eight percent more than do men. Other economists have made comparisons between women and men looking in the same fields, with the same amount of experience, working the same numbers of hours, and with similar educational backgrounds. Men and women make the same amount when those other factors are taken into account.
Given that men and women are paid equally, what then is it that the National Organization for Women wants, exactly?
We’re told constantly that African Americans are over-represented in our prisons and jails. What we are told less frequently is that African Americans are also over-represented in our violent crime rates, and that when crime rates are taken into account, African Americans are not over-represented in our prisons and jails. We are told constantly that African Americans make less money, on average, than do white people. We are not told very often that when economists compare African Americans raised in two-parent households to white Americans raised in two-parent households, there is no income difference (nor is there a crime rate difference). We are not told very frequently that when economists compare African Americans whose parents are college educated to white Americans whose parents are college educated, the African Americans earn more than do white people from similar households.
When we point out that women make different decisions than men, once they get married and have children, or that the reason African Americans seem to make less on average than white people is that a larger percentage of them are raised in single-parent households, we are accused of blaming the victim. In such a way, any reference to cause and effect relationships is lost, making the blame-game emotional rather than logical. Suddenly, success comes not from hard work and perseverance, but from unearned privilege – conditions derived from circumstances we do not control. If all differences in crime rates, educational achievement, incomes, and other things, are derived purely based on forces outside our own control, then fairness dictates we make up for those differences somehow. Rather than pushing for equality under the law – something these groups have had for decades – the push is for equality of outcomes, which can only be achieved by unequal treatment under the law. These organizations are not fighting for equality, but for the opposite of equality, which they call ‘Social Justice.’
If I told you that I had two people who had committed identical crimes under identical circumstances, and that the two people had identical backgrounds, but that I was going to sentence one of them twice as long to balance-out my prison population, you would think I was being unjust, but this is exactly the sort of thing Social Justice calls for. ‘Social Justice’ is an interesting term, as it is the exact opposite of justice. As such, the left is fighting for inequality, and injustice, as crazy as that might sound. Those who are not indoctrinated can see through the leftist positions on these issues very clearly, but because the left calls anyone who speaks out against their agenda all kinds of bad names, most people do not speak out, but cower instead. It is time to stop cowering, and to call Democrats what they are: crazy.
Some Democrats don’t really believe in all of the garbage the Democrat National Committee (DNC) puts out, but there are some who truly do believe, and the true believers sound crazy because they are. Before we let the Democrats who do not buy all the garbage off the hook though, keep in mind that they vote for the ones who do believe, and because of this, the harm of liberal policies continues. The War on Poverty, as just one example, perpetuates poverty, yet the DNC keeps calling for more of the same. Albert Einstein called that the definition of ‘crazy’.
Once the Democrat National Committee accepts inequality and injustice as the societal norms to pursue, the Democrat crazy-train goes into full loco-mode. We have entire professions in fields like sociology that are practically dedicated to stretching the truth as far past the breaking-point as possible. How, for example, does someone with a doctorate in Feminist Studies get published? By writing that women and men are equal? In an environment where those with doctorates must either ‘publish or perish,’ as the saying goes, the doctor in Feminist Studies must write about ways that women are oppressed, even if that oppression does not exist. In a world where the outrageous is celebrated as ‘courageous’, fields such as these completely separate themselves from reality. We end up with articles like Math is racist. We end up with college professors telling white male students to commit suicide for the betterment of the human race. We end up with attacks on our national culture and identity and calls for radical change and fundamental transformation. We end up with, you guessed it, crazy.
This country was founded on as perfect of an idea as has ever been created. Our founding forefathers did not, unfortunately, have the wherewithal to universally apply those ideals – slavery and sexism being a legitimate black mark on our founding heritage – but consider for a moment that the universal application of those ideals does not constitute a fundamental transformation. Consider too that last year marked the 50th anniversary of true equal treatment under the law. The law is of course applied by people, and it is possible for people to imperfectly apply the law, no matter how perfect the law may be.
Democrats focus on trying to build a country where the imperfections of people are somehow corrected, and many of the things they want to correct for are some of the most basic traits of humanity. Donald Trump is ridiculed as a world leader for taking our country in a different direction than that of many other countries, in spite of the fact that leaders choose directions, and that taking the direction of others is the definition of following. Democrats cheer the ‘leaders’ who are the most vocal in doing the same things everyone else is doing, and in doing so, those they call ‘leaders’ are really nothing more than loud followers. I salute Trump for putting American interests first, and on matters of policy,Trump has done a pretty good job so far. Is it not crazy to focus on Twitter instead of actual policies that affect flesh and blood human beings? Is it not crazy to focus on the use of the phrase ‘shit hole’ without any discussion on whether or not the context the phrase was used in was correct? Trump does not want to eliminate immigration, but he does want to ensure that those immigrating into the United States assimilate, such that America is not radically transformed. We are the richest, most powerful nation in human history. That was not an accident – it was because the things this country was founded on work. Democrats want to move even further away from those things. Democrats are crazy.