As I mentioned in my Thursday post, here is the second right-wing e-mail my friend sent me. As you can see, it’s short on facts and long on opinion, but this is what passes for an intellectual argument on the right.
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.
The professor then said, “OK”, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan…All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will do better than anyone else…(substituting grades for dollars – something closer to home and more readily understood by all).
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.
As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.
To their great surprise, ALL FAILED, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed…Could not be any simpler than that.
Pass this on…remember there IS a test coming up…the 2012 Elections!
These are possibly the 5 best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:
1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person received without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, this is the beginning of the end of any nation.
Can you think of a reason for not sharing this? Neither could I.
Actually, I could think of a few reasons for not sharing this. For starters, it never happened. It’s the kind of thing Jon Kyl would use to defend his position on the Senate floor, after which he would claim it was “Not intended to be a factual statement.” If a teacher ever tried to grade a class in this way, he or she would be fired.
Second, the right likes to call anything short of unregulated Capitalism “Socialism.” If they were paying attention, they would know that some of President Obama’s policies have contributed to the income disparity in this country.
Lastly, I really wish right-wingers would try to use common sense and fact-check these kinds of e-mails before sending them off to everyone they know.
So, what else can you find wrong with this e-mail? Or you can talk about anything else you want.
This is our open thread — Discuss!
