Do you remember growing up in the days of playing marbles as a kid in school? Outside our elementary school, between the brick school and the asphalt playground, was a long strip of just plain dirt about three feet wide and the length of the building. It was in the pristinely manicured dirt that boys (boys only – it was an unwritten rule) played marbles. It wasn’t that the boys refused to allow the girls to play. As I recall it, we were yucky and we had cooties so the girls would rather be jumping rope or playing on the swings. They chose their own games because playing marbles was just dumb.
I can recall having my very own faux leather marble bag alternating green and tan sections with a leather drawstring at the top. It was great to show off your best Cat’s Eye or sky blue marble and if you had Jumbos or Steelies, you had a marble shooter’s weapon of choice!
The game, for all those who are marble deficient in your education began with a circle drawn in the dirt. A stick, pencil or ruler would do, but most often, the always handy index finger was the best. The game began with each player putting a marble in the circle and, in turn, you used your shooter marble to try and knock your opponents’ marbles out of the circle; at which point, it became yours. This is critical to understanding the game. The shooter who wins a marble gets to keep shooting until he misses or the marble hit does not roll out of the circle. The marbles not rolling out, stay in the circle and are fair game for anyone to shoot at, and if skilled or lucky, to win. Some kids left the game having lost all their marbles. (No pun intended!) Those guys would be found on the weekend scrounging for empty pop bottles to return to the store for the 2 cent deposit refund. They would use their new found cash to return to the Five and Dime store to buy more marbles before the next school week.
In today’s politically correct world, there would be a hue and cry raised across the land if Little Johnny came home without his marbles because some other kid had won them! That’s not fair! We have to teach our kids that everyone is a winner! Everything must be equal! This is America – everything is to be fair and equal!
If you do a word search of either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States and try to find fair and equal you will find only one sentence. “… all men are created equal.” That all persons start out equal in life is a far cry from believing that society must seek to insure that everything is fair and equal.
Consider a game of marbles made to be fair and equal as determined by today’s Pablum pushing professors and politicians. If Little Johnny knocks Jimmy’s marble out of the circle, he must immediately return it to Jimmy and apologize for targeting him. To be equal, too, no one person should have more marbles than anyone else so the teacher will maintain control of the bags of marbles; making certain that each one has the same number, size and type. She will issue them out at recess and retrieve them when recess concludes. Any student who gathers pop bottles on Saturday morning (if this were possible) to buy his own marbles Saturday afternoon will have to give those to the teacher on Monday. The teacher then will divide them equally into the bags.
Sound ridiculous? Ask any elementary school child if they play any games at school where some kids win and some kids lose; where some get a reward and others get nothing. Since public schools are the purveyors of political correctness for the proletariat, they have created a society norm of fair and equal that can only be recreated in the real world by militant methodologies such as what Karl Marx lovingly brought to the people of Mat’ Rossija or Mother Russia.
The context in the statement All men are created equal and a precise reading of it makes it clear that all men are created, or begin their lives, as equal. In God’s sight, every person is His divine creation for whom His Son, Jesus Christ, suffered crucifixion for the redemption of all. It does not infer that all persons are to be equal in all things such as individual prosperity or achievement. Among the inalienable rights endowed upon His creation by God, Himself, is, as the Declaration of Independence describes it) the pursuit of happiness. It is not that we have the right to be happy but, rather free to seek our happiness through lawful endeavors. Everyone may be allowed to play marbles but only one wins.
If the Founding Fathers did not see a place for fairness and equality in achievement or prosperity, then from where does such an idea originate; and, more importantly, where does it lead? In the mid- 1800’s the nation clamored to understand and define the relationships between races and the immorality of slave ownership. President Lincoln did not attempt to make the case for an equality of mankind. Rather, he simply states that all slaves are to be free. They were not eligible to vote and many other measures of segregation remained for decades.
In the early 1900’s, the advent of workers’ unions battled for fair wages and in some respects, equality by job or function (except in the matters of race or sex). Inequalities were innumerable. The Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King and President Lyndon Johnson blurred the lines of historical fact. They interpreted the context of the Declaration in their attempt to justify a role for the government to enforce an equality of opportunity for all and subjectively applied a concept of equality and fairness in the strict sense unintended by the Founding Fathers. The unintended (or, at least, undeclared) consequences of the purposely ambiguous wording has opened a Pandora’s Box of liberal thought and social reform in the name of equality and fairness. I do not argue that everyone should not have an equal opportunity; but, that does not mean that I will ever have the gifts or skill to perform certain jobs and I should not expect that legislation will afford me that job regardless of my abilities. Dr. King and President Johnson would likely agree. Today, however, common sense and reason have left the room and are not expected to return anytime soon!
The institutions of higher learning, particularly government funded universities, the education assembly lines, tasked with processing through the teachers of the next generations, have been complicit in the promotion of everything equal and fair. Every student is a winner and every competition is for the fun of the play with no need to keep score. Never are there any losers.
There is one particularly glaring flaw in the No Losers world and that is – it creates a plethora of losers! All of those who truly achieved must lose their victory. The one who had the skill, patience and made the effort to be the best marble shooter ends up losing his marbles when everyone wins. The best and brightest, as sought by President Kennedy, become instead a nation of Tootles.
When achievement and success are not rewarded and every person receives identical compensation, regardless of effort put forth; then eventually, all will gravitate to the lowest median effort. America can find itself becoming a nation of couch potato type undeserving welfare recipients who do only the minimum required to stay in the system.
Not very long ago, President Obama declared that there was no such thing as American Exceptionalism. In his view of the Great Society, he is correct. No longer need anyone try harder, study more and challenge the norm because there is no longer any reward for such effort. Why would Baskin Robbins need thirty-one flavors if everyone wants vanilla? One item on every menu in every restaurant that is identical to all others is all that is needed. One car of the people as Hitler envisioned or a return to Henry Ford’s quip, ” People can get the Model T in any color as long as its black.” (thequotepedia.com)
When we, as a nation, choose fair and equal, we set a course for mediocrity. Pride taken in one’s efforts and accomplishments is judged as out of step with society. Those nations who do inspire vision, reward effort and recognize excellence will soon hold all the marbles. Then, like Tootles, all we can do is cry, Peter, I’ve lost all my marbles!
Doc Riggs' Ministry Minute 