The Question Our Society Needs to Ask Ten Times More: Does It Work?
When I first went to college, I didn’t know a lot about politics and didn’t have particularly well-formed political views. In other words, I was an Independent in the true sense of the word.
Still, I wanted to learn more about politics and I had lots of liberal professors who were trying to push their views on all of us. I listened to what they had to say and found it… impractical. I literally had a professor who advocated GETTING RID OF OUR MILITARY. When I asked him, what we’d do if say, Cuba invaded and started terrorizing the country, he basically said, “Well, we’d just invite those soldiers in for dinner with our families and show them that we’re human beings just like them.” Even as a naïve teenager, that sounded completely bonkers to me… and of course, it was.
There really wasn’t a conservative presence that I knew of on campus, so I decided to listen to Rush Limbaugh to see if conservatives made more sense than liberals. As it turned out, I found him to be a fountain of knowledge, logic, and common sense. Liberalism may have been out of touch with reality, but conservatism at least seemed pragmatic and focused on what worked. In fact, that’s why I’m a conservative today.
On a related note, I became a big fan of Tony Robbins. He is not everyone’s cup of tea, and I get that, but one of the key themes he used to hammer over and over in those days was to find people who were successful at whatever you wanted to do and COPY THEM. Copy what they do, copy how they think and, copy their patterns. Who better to learn from than someone already successful at doing what you want to do? If you want to be a success, model success.
Philosophically, this is something I’ve embraced throughout my adult life. Look for things that work. Look for the people that are succeeding. Look for the philosophies that are making good things happen for people in the real world and learn from what you’re doing. Granted, that doesn’t guarantee that you’re going to win, but it’s an amazing place to start.
They could tell you all about that in El Salvador, where Nayib Bukele, who likes to call himself, “The World’s Coolest Dictator,” came up with a unique way to fix the country’s completely out-of-control crime problem that was making life unbearable for the citizens of his country. He consolidated power and then simply arrested all the known gang members and put them in prison. He was widely condemned for doing this and if we’re being perfectly honest here, we are talking about a dictator here who undoubtedly swept up some innocent people in his massive round-up of gang members. On the other hand:
In 2015, El Salvador had 6,656 homicides, making it one of the world’s deadliest countries. In 2023, there were 214 homicides. …El Salvador closed 2024 with a record low 114 homicides, continuing notable security gains under a second full year of a state of emergency that has given the government extraordinary powers and curtailed some fundamental rights.
It’s impossible to tell how long it will last, but at least for the moment, Bukele seems to be extremely popular in El Salvador – and for good reason. The country had an enormous problem that was destroying the quality of life there, and he FIXED IT. You might not like the way he fixed it, but the people there QUITE UNDERSTANDABLY preferred fixing it in that ugly fashion to sticking with the bloody status quo.
That brings us to Donald Trump and how he became president twice despite being a bombastic, hyper-aggressive, rule breaker. At this late date, it seems to have a lot to do with the fact that our country is deeply dysfunctional, the Democrats only make it worse and the Republicans with power seem almost bizarrely content with the status quo.
This country has real problems. Serious problems and at a certain point, people stop giving a damn about the process and just want results. If the process makes it impossible to succeed, it is by default a bad process. If doing things “the right way” means you’re forever doomed to lose and your country is going to die, there’s something wrong with, “the right way.”
Even as someone who is big on “process” and “doing things the right way,” it seems like too many other people who feel the same way look at those things as nothing more than an excuse to make a half-hearted effort, shrug their shoulders and go, “Oh well, we tried,” as the country goes down the tubes. On the other hand:
Morality does indeed matter. If it works and it’s evil, you still shouldn’t do it. If you absolutely knew you could murder your neighbors, loot their homes, make lots of money, and get away with it, you still shouldn’t do it because it’s wrong. It’s also true that what may not work today may work in the future. The fact is that we’ve heard of people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk because they pursued their dreams before they knew they were legitimately possible.
However, so much of modern living today features doing things that clearly don’t work, that seem unlikely to ever work, for fuzzy reasons that don’t necessarily make a lot of sense.
Look at modern feminism, for example. It’s a bunch of bitter, unhappy, angry, never-satisfied women raging against half the planet in return for… what exactly? Does becoming a feminist make it more or less likely you’re going to have a happy life? Clearly less. So, why go down that road? Does DEI produce a more competent workforce than judging by merit? Of course, not.
Fill in the blank here: “Everything woke turns to…” What? We all know how to finish that sentence, so why be woke? Listen to the perpetually aggrieved people who are always whining about “microaggressions” or “pronouns.” Are they ever satisfied? Do they ever sound like happy people? What’s the one thing that goes along with cities that have rent control? Extremely high rents. If people who believe they’re the opposite sex have a 40% suicide rate, that seems like a phenomenal reason to discourage their delusion. New York City is famous for letting mentally ill career criminals run wild in their city and they’re also famous for the crimes committed by those same people. Does putting criminals through a revolving door to let them right back on the street reduce or increase crime? We all know the answer, so why do it?
Sometimes we need to try things and see how they play out, but so many people are doing things in this country that have no chance of being successful and then they blame the world because their fantasies didn’t play out. Well, it’s not the world’s fault. For the most part, you might have to look a little bit, but what works isn’t a mystery. Beating your head against the wall of how the world works seems like a good way to get a headache for nothing.
Even if you’re one of the people who doesn’t believe the Bible is the word of God, you should at least see the value in this line:
Why copy people who are bitter, unhappy, and angry? Why implement policies that have been proven to fail? Why be afraid to let policies you believe in be judged by their results?
Look for what works and do it! That’s the path to a better life!
You will probably dislike this comment, but, no one's perfect. When I read the paragraph about people who are "big on process", and "doing things the right way," I think of people like Jonah Goldberg. Seems to me that he's the type who would rather "lose, but keep his principles," than get down in the mud, piss off some prissy fussbudgets, and get the job done. Trump is not perfect; no one contends that, but is he effective? I'd say yes, and I thank God for his presidency. Thanks for posting this interesting and thought-provoking column.
That's all well and good in practice but the real question we need to be asking is "does it work in theory?"