Meritocracy. If you tell children they can do anything if they try really hard, you’re lying to them, and there will be consequences. Just be grateful the kids didn’t jump out a window and flap their arms really fast.

The correct formula is “in a meritocracy, you can go as far as your abilities permit.” Not will, mind you: can. If you slack off, you will not go as far as your abilities permit. But you will not be stopped by your sex or color or by who your parents were–given that these are irrelevant to where you’re trying to go. They mostly are. Franklin wrote that in Europe they asked of a man “who are his parents?” and in America “what can he do?” Not strictly true even then, but the very definition of meritocracy.

But of course it will have issues at the margins. We have every right to see our children get “a good start.” We have public schools and dozens of welfare programs to see that everyone gets some sort of start, but the child whose parents have books in the home will still have an edge over the child whose parents do not, and private tutors and “elite” schools can hone that edge a little. Short of state-run nurseries, this one isn’t going away. We can improve the floor, but no one wants to build a ceiling.

The Yale and Tunxis question is more interesting. The Yalie, of course, is inclined to think the race is now over, and he’s won. Many would agree with him. The Tunxis graduate may think this is confusing intelligence and education with the prestige of the degree, and demand a recount. I tend to side with Tunxis in this. Possession of a “good” degree suggests both education and intelligence, but it’s not proof of either. Let those who would dispute me contemplate my first paragraph.

If Jane and her political allies think conservative jocks will be tormenting them in the locker rooms again, conservatives know that the only way to deal with these parasites is to keep them so far from government they have to have real jobs. Otherwise, they’ll take our last hour of time and call it “volunteer work” and steal our last dollar–for the children, of course. They will never go away, and they’ll never let us live our own lives. And we have a lot more evidence to support our fears.

If a politician wants my vote, not sounding like one of those pseudointellectual blowhards is a good place to start. Buckley, bless him, never did, but there is a long line of people with half his wisdom and erudition whining that conservatives won’t vote for them because conservatives are in love with stupidity.

Drop a smart kid in a dumpster? Oh, come on: I was the smart kid. But drop a student government type in a dumpster? If I’d known what they’d grow up to be, I’d have dropped them in trash compactors.

And I didn’t go to junior high; it hadn’t been invented. We had “elementary” (in bigger centres, further subdivided into “elementary” and “primary”) and, on the further sides of a pair of doors, “high school” (grades 9,10 and 11). That neatly split the 8s and 9s. No grade 12 then, either. But I taught junior high, and it’s the worst of the worst. Personally, I blamed all those new hormones that the kids don’t quite know what to do with.

I got burned by “anybody can do anything if they just work hard enough”, but it was after high school. Failure is tough. I don’t think I resorted to picking on others who did succeed where I failed, though.

There’s another aspect as well – how do you define the worth of the individual? If your entire self-concept is tied up in your income level, or the status awarded to your work, you’re going to react far more destructively to the failure of your ambitions than if you see yourself as a child of God who can do any task, however menial, to the glory of God. Or as a mother or father who simply uses work and any related indignities to fund what’s really important – raising children. There’s also charity or social or community groups. Amateur sports. Hobbies. It’s not necessary for the only important thing about a person to be their salary and job title. Maybet that’s something that’s hard for a lot of people to accept.