Thanks to
Heather once again for finding this jewel.
Also thank you Neal Boortz for telling it so like it is! Deb V
The Neal Boortz Commencement Speech
Neal Boortz – His Website Here
I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august
occasion. It's about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress
you; you'll have enough smoke blown your way today. And you can bet your
tassels I'm not here to impress the faculty and administration.
You may not like much of what I have to say, and that's
fine. You will remember it though. Especially after about 10 years out there in
the real world. This, it goes without saying, does not apply to those of you
who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees.
This gowned gaggle behind me is your faculty. You’ve
heard the old saying that those who can - do. Those who can't - teach. That
sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity,
just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say
good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and
do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.
By the way, just because you are leaving this place
with a diploma doesn’t mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner
handed me my private pilot’s license many years ago, he said, 'Here, this is
your ticket to learn.' The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the
learning has just begun.
Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves
Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care
so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you're a
compassionate and caring person, aren't you now? Well, isn’t that just so
extraordinarily special. Now, at this
age, is as good a time as any to be a Liberal; as good a time as any to know
absolutely everything. You have plenty
of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in. Over the next few years,
as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are
going to start changing pretty fast .. including your own assessment of just
how much you really know.
So here are the first assignments for your initial
class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the
words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then
compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those
evil, heartless, greedy conservatives.
From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will
hear "I think." From the
Liberals you will hear references to groups --The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich,
The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references
to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right,
individual rights.
That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals
care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think -- and,
setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the
individual.
Liberals feel that their favored groups, have
enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals.
Conservatives (and Libertarians, myself among them I might add) think that
individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the
plunder of the masses.
In college you developed a group mentality, but if you
look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names
on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority,
but your name. Your group identity is going away. Your recognition
and appreciation of your individual identity starts now.
If, by the time you reach the age of 30, you do not
consider yourself to be a libertarian or a conservative, rush right back here
as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will
welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you
haven’t developed an individual
identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group
mentality you embraced during the past four years.
Something is going to happen soon that is going to
really open your eyes. You’re going to
actually get a full time job! You’re also going to get a lifelong work
partner. This partner isn’t going to
help you do your job. This partner is
just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn’t want to share
in your effort, you’re your earnings.
Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent. An agent
representing a strange and diverse group of people. An agent for every teenager with an illegitimate child. An agent for a research scientist who wanted
to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their
teeth. An agent for some poor demented hippie who considers herself to be a
meaningful and talented artist ... but who just can’t manage to sell any of her
artwork on the open market.
Your new partner is an agent for every person with
limited, if any, job skills ... but who wanted a job at City Hall. An agent for
tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign
aid. An agent for multi-million-dollar companies who want someone else to pay
for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the
unimaginable power of this agent's for their personal enrichment and benefit.
That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate,
oppressive government. Believe me, you
will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has. Power that you do not
have. A power that no individual has, or will have. This agent has the legal
power to use force – deadly force – to accomplish its goals.
You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce
itself rather gruffly, hand you a few
forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal
one ton gorilla. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.
Now, let me tell
you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40%
of everything you earn. And no,
I'm sorry, there just isn't any way you can fire this agent of plunder, and you
can’t decrease it’s share of your income. That power rests with him, not
you.
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. Yes … a necessary evil, but 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.
Now – let’s address a few things that have been crammed
into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as
soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they
fail miserably out there in the real world.
First – that favorite buzz word of the media,
government and academia: Diversity!
You have been taught that the real value of any group of
people - be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever
- is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is
based not on an individual's abilities or character, but on a person’s identity
and status as a member of a group. Yes – it’s that liberal group identity thing
again.
Within the great
diversity movement group identification - be it racial, gender based, or
some other minority status - means more than the individual's integrity,
character or other qualifications.
Brace yourself.
You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity
rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence
actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last
four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement
for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. From this day on
every single time you hear the word "diversity" you can rest assured
that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of
individuality you possess.
We also need to address this thing you seem to have
about "rights." We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called
"rights" in the last few decades, usually emanating from college
campuses.
You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The
right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care.
The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right - the right
to a Beemer, for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that
child you plan on downloading in a year or so.
Forget it.
Forget those rights! I'll tell you what your rights are! You have
a right to live free, and to the results of your labor. I'll also tell you have no right to any
portion of the life or labor of another.
You may, for instance, think that you have a right to
health care. After all, Hillary said
so, didn’t she? But you cannot receive
health care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his
time - his life - to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but
that's his choice. You have no "right" to his time or property. You
have no right to his or any other person's life or to any portion thereof.
You may also think you have some "right" to a
job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that
you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right
to demand that this person compensate you with their money? Sorry, forget it. I
am sure you would scream if some urban outdoorsmen (that would be
"homeless person" for those of you who don’t want to give these less
fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his
job and your money.
The people who have been telling you about all the
rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs - the right to be
imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn’t cost anyone else either property or
time. It's their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.
By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase
"less fortunate" a bit ago when I was talking about the urban
outdoorsmen? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you'll
understand why.
To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty,
drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is
"less fortunate" is to imply that a successful person - one with a
job, a home and a future - is in that position because he or she was
"fortunate." The dictionary says that fortunate means "having
derived good from an unexpected place." There is nothing unexpected about
deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving
misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street.
If the Left can create the common perception that
success and failure are simple matters of "fortune" or
"luck," then it is easy to promote and justify their various income
redistribution schemes. After all, we are just evening out the odds a little bit.
This "success equals luck" idea the liberals
like to push is seen everywhere. Democratic presidential candidate Richard
Gephardt refers to high-achievers as "people who have won life's
lottery." He wants you to believe they are making the big bucks
because they are lucky.
It's not luck, my friends. It's choice. One of the
greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled "The
Greatest Secret in the World." The lesson? Very simple: "Use
wisely your power of choice."
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.
Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay
in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle.
Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job.
Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge
payments for that new car.
Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom
to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube
tonight, or read a book on investing.
But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a
building block - some large, some small. But each one is a part of the
structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more
right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you.
Something unthinkable. You, my friend,
could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy,, the
successful, the rich.
Quite a few people have made that mistake.
The rich basically serve two purposes in this country.
First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for
the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that
send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.
Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule,
distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than
the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.
Envy is a powerful emotion. Even more powerful than the
emotional minefield that surrounded Bill Clinton when he reviewed his last
batch of White House interns. Politicians use envy to get votes and
power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will
be punished: "The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have
anything to do with it.'
The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this
country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what
these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more "fair."
You have heard, no doubt, that in America the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government's own
numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of
the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get
richer, and the poor who remain poor … there’s an explanation -- a reason. The
rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep
doing the things that make them poor.
Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are
going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor
in America. So, you need to know that
under our government's definition of "poor" you can have a $5 million
net worth, a $300,000 home and a new $90,000 Mercedes, all completely paid
for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and $1 million in your
checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as
"living in poverty." Now there's something you haven't seen on the evening
news.
How does the government pull this one off? Very simple,
really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is "living in
poverty," the government measures one thing -- just one thing. Income. It doesn't matter one bit how much you
have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or
not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in
the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much
income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a
one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the
money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great
American novel, the government says you are 'living in poverty."
This isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you heard
these gloomy statistics, is it?
Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government's
own statistics show that people who are said to be "living in
poverty" spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim.
Something is a bit fishy here. just remember all this the next time Peter
Jennings puffs up and tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.
Why has the government concocted this phony poverty
scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social
welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the
government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of
"poor" is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an
electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive
Compassion Disorder.
I'm about to be
stoned by the faculty here. They've already changed their minds about that
honorary degree I was going to get. That's OK, though. I still have my Ph.D. in
Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. I
learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It's a trap. Think about it - the
truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity
and you’ll be unable to deal with life, or the truth. So, get over it.
Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I
have a few random thoughts.
• You need to register to vote, unless you are on
welfare. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of
sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again.
• When you do vote, your votes for the House and the
Senate are more important than your vote for president. The House controls the purse
strings, so concentrate your awareness there.
• Liars cannot be trusted, even when the liar is the
president of the United States. If someone can’t deal honestly with you, send
them packing.
• Don't bow to the temptation to use the government as
an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone
else who earned it -- to take their money by force for your own needs -- then
it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step
forward and do this dirty work for you.
• Don’t look in other people's pockets. You have no
business there. What they earn is theirs. What your earn is yours. Keep it that
way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your
rights, and leave you the hell alone.
• Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is
for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You
don’t see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon
at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The
winners drive home in the dark.
• Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech.
Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
• Finally (and aren’t you glad to hear that word), as
Og Mandino wrote,
1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and
unique human being.
2. Use wisely your power of choice.
3. Go the extra mile ... drive home in the dark.
Oh, and put off buying a television set as long as you
can.
Now, if you have any idea at all what's good for you,
you will get the hell out of here and never come back.
Class Dismissed.