Reality Check

Neal Boortz is a Texan, a lawyer, a Texas AGGIE (Texas A&M), and now a
nationally syndicated talk show host from Atlanta . His commencement
address to the graduates of this years A&M class is far different from what either
the students or the faculty expected. His views are thought provoking.

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 up your bloomers 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, I 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, but in 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 of
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 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 its share of your
income. That power rests with him, not you. So, here I am saying negative
things to you about government. Well beclear 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 is 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
60% -75% 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 healthcare 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 Liberal 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. Former
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.

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 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 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 $ 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 Charles Gibson 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 PhD. 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
country. 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 you 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'


Semper Fi, Bill Tweet