When everybody’s special, nobody is

Gavin McInnes writes an important article in Taki's Magazine.

When everybody’s special, nobody is. Getting everyone into college means you have to dumb down the curriculum until it is nothing but meaningless drivel that has no application in the real world. Colleges aren’t going to complain when you stick them with more customers. They just take the check, lower the bar, and say, “Come on in.” But getting a gold star on your math test does not a computer programmer make.

If we got over this myth that everyone needs infinite academia, we would have less unemployment, more manufacturing, a stronger economy, less student debt, and less school tax.

I’m not denying that outsourcing and automation has made many jobs obsolete. Of course it has. But that doesn’t mean you abandon the entire concept of a working class. There is still a huge demand for skilled labor.

But our young people aren’t skilled (or interested) in hard labor, so we bring in illegal Mexicans. When you take away a young person’s ability to work, you take away their pride. If we had more skilled tradesmen, we’d have more entrepreneurs in manufacturing and the Rust Belt would get a coat of paint. The hulking youths from the factory floor of yesteryear are tending bar today. They make enough money to pay the interest on their student loans, but that’s about it. They can’t pay rent, so they live with their parents and they have no self-esteem because this bar job is the first one they’ve ever had. “Undocumented” workers did all the chores while growing up. Many of them also make more money than the bartender who sleeps on his parents’ couch ever will. Way to go, equality.

Thanks to Maggie's Farm for linking to Taki's Magazine.

One quibble: McInnes implies that people in "working class" jobs have lower I.Q.s. That is definitely not always the case. My two stepsons, for example, both chose not to go to college. I believe they both have very high I.Q.s.