Success, Achievement, 'Special People,' and Liberalism

Bob Beamon didn’t get a lot of encouragement as a child. Raised by his grandmother, his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 11 months old, and he never knew his father. He struggled with doubt, thinking he was unwanted, for many of his early years. In high school, a coach offered a glimmer of hope, saying he had the talent to go to the Olympics if he kept working hard. And he did.

It’s been 40 years since Beamon literally walked on air, obliterating world and Olympic records with a long jump of 29 feet 2½ inches at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Eloquent and thought-provoking, Beamon has become a sought-after public speaker. “I have a few messages, but education is the main thing,” he says. “It’s to get kids to deal with reality. Many of them become involved in drugs or something else, and it’s a dirty world when they get into drugs.”

Beamon compares the situations of struggling inner-city youths to those in Third World countries, hoping to awaken a sense of appreciativeness and esteem.

You know, overseas in the little villages of Africa, for example, there is no hope, he says. The children are dying of diseases and hunger and they can’t get medicine. Our kids here are throwing away food. We are really blessed over here, and I tell them that. I tell them, ‘I don’t care what color your skin is, what nationality you are or what religion you preach, there is opportunity here.’

A few years ago, at a Manhattan hotel where he was a guest, the hotel’s assistant manager approached him. Remember me, Mr. Beamon? the young man asked. Beamon smiled but shook his head. One day you gave an incredible speech at our school, the young man told him. I just followed what you said and tried to make something of myself. I just wanted to thank you for it.

For Beamon, those experiences are the payoff and motivator behind his success, and the success of those he inspires. (Jeff Snook, The Leap Of A Lifetime, Success Magazine).

I continued:

The Bob Beamon’s of world will do far far more good than your [Mr. Abdallah's] proposals ever will—because Bob Beamon life is a living testament to the hope and power and promise of America. Perhaps, Mr. Abdallah, you see yourself and others as helpless victims. If so, you do a profound disservice to yourself and those others. The Bob Beamon’s of the world have done more good for more people than any radical leftist agenda.

Then I got the most interesting response:

This is one of those feel-good stories that true believers latch onto with the ardor of children clutching their favorite stuffed bunny. And with even a casual look you can see it’s made of cotton, not flesh and bones.

Sure, Bob Beamon came from nothing and made something of himself. So did Nikita Khrushchev. It’s not about a magical land of opportunity. It’s about some people just having something special inside them, a super-ambition that overcomes virtually every obstacle. They are the exception, not the rule, in all societies, rich or pore, free market or communist. Yes, our system provides many more opportunities than a closed, totalitarian system. And that’s a good thing.

But to suggest that every one of us, if we just would get off our lazy asses can become an Olympic record-breaker -or even a McDonald’s franchise owner- is patently nonsense. It’s the wet dream of the right, the grand rationale for hoarding what they have earned (or inherited). It confuses equal opportunity for equal possibility, it ignores the reality that we are not created equal and equality of opportunity in LAW is not the same thing as actual equality of opportunity in LIFE.

And what really irks me is when people like GWB and William Kristol (and you?) spout this BS, when in fact, if they were born in poverty and raised in the circumscribed world of the ‘hood, they would be one of the vast majority of those people who would never be able to escape. Because they don’t have that very rare something that Beamon had. (tdbach, response comment on TruthDig, italics mine).

This was the saddest thing I've ever heard, i.e., that most people are “ordinary,” not really capable of extra-ordinary acts and actions when needed (i.e., to overcome poverty); not everyone is “special.” Everyone wants things, great things, but there’s only very few individuals that that can achieve these things. Most will fail if not born either lucky or 'special'."The Right" just spins this “fairytale” so they can place the blame for failure on the individual, not on the capitalistic system.

If this is the mind set of liberals, liberalism, and liberal values, it's no wonder liberals are less happy than conservatives.

I don’t care what color your skin is, what nationality you are or what religion you preach, there is opportunity here. (Bob Beamon).

It seems to me that Bob Beamon is a living proof of the truth of that statement. He offers people something the Left never has — he believes in them and in liberty. That's all you really need.

The basic "liberal" or leftist assumptions of human nature bifurcates into self-serving- and (oblivious to everyone but the progressives themselves) cross-purposes, e.g., on the one hand popular and populist leftist progressives, like Ron Chusid The Useful Idiot, admire "Liberal Heroes," like Eliot Spitzer, who they feel can make the world a better place, yet their view of the rest of us is either as helpless victims or the lucky few (who then need to be taxed in the name of fairness -- Sigh).

I find at least some of the liberal mind set depressing, so I'll end on a happy note -- the triumph of a man who fortunately never saw himself as most liberals probably sadly do:

Shout !t Out! Tell us what You Th!nk!

Shout !t Out! Results: