The Cult of Nice - by Jeffrey Johnson

Heavenly Father commands all of his children to obey the commandments and be good.  In western civilization’s continuing rebellion against Heavenly Father most people have substituted the commandment to be good with being nice.  The substitution of good with nice is not just a secular sin but also a religious sin.  In modern Christianity the Church has elevated niceness above all other virtues.  The cult of nice is a plague growing in Christianity.

Niceness vs. Goodness

In the original Latin the word nice meant know nothing.  In the original Latin if somebody called you nice, they were calling you a know nothing fool.  It was a way of saying that you just didn’t get it.  As part of the West’s rebellion against goodness, the West has come to embrace nice as its greatest virtue.

In the modern world nice has come to mean:

1.    Never stand up for ourselves.

2.    Never stand up for our beliefs.

3.    Nice is catering to other’s whims no matter what.

4.    Nice is accepting others’ sins without expecting them to repent.

5.    Nice is bowing down to our enemies.

6.    Nice is refusing justified and necessary conflict whether verbal, emotional or even physical.

You will notice the elements of nice best represent modern cuckservatives in the churches and in GOP politics.  This is why the GOP always loses to leftists except occasionally lowering capital gains taxes for its billionaire financers.  The GOP is nice and makes sure always to roll over for its supposed enemies.

Niceness stands as a sorry watered down attempt to imitate goodness.  Being good implies:

1.    We obey the commandments

2.    We resist evil.

3.    We correctly apply justice and mercy in our lives by accepting repenting sinners but also keeping unrepentant sinners away from us.

4.    We stand up for ourselves, our families, our communities and our nations.

5.    We refuse to fall for emotional manipulation.

6.    We say NO.

Aurelius Moner is a monk who contributes at Returnofkings.com has this to say about niceness in his profile:

The road to hell is paved with the good intentions of “nice” people; but a man’s duty is to be good, rather than nice… and to keep nice people away from anything of value or import.

Why has Christianity swapped niceness for goodness?

Why have all modern Christian churches, (this includes the LDS Church) decided to embrace niceness instead of focusing on encouraging its members to live good lives?  The first reason is because being good requires lots of effort and struggle.  To live good you have to avoid sin and sinners.  You have to stay in constant vigilance to keep sin from entering into your church and community.  Being good requires you to call out sin even when it is unpopular to call out sin.  More than anything else being good requires you to get in there and get your hands dirty.

Nice is easy.  You don’t have to do anything.  If you see people trying to enter your church to make an attempt to corrupt it, you don’t have to make a stand against them.  You just have to say, “well they are good people who are misguided” and then do nothing else.  This is the seduction of nice, all you have to do is refuse to confront wickedness because you are nice and nice people don’t fight.  The cult of nice is very seductive because it offers salvation without struggle.

Focusing on being nice instead of good makes it easy to status signal.  The cult of nice gives the appearance of virtue without any struggle.  If you declare yourself a nice person you can claim all the benefits of being highly virtuous without having to do anything.  All you have to do is just tell everybody how great they are and not notice anything.  Nice as a substitute for real virtue allows nice people to status signal.  If being nice is a high virtue than anybody can be virtuous without having to overcome their sins.

The cult of nice allows the followers of niceness to out group others.  The wicked can remove their enemies by declaring them “not nice” and the herd will remove the “not nice.”  Whenever the nice don’t like somebody all they have to do is say the person they don’t like is “not nice” and they can exclude them from the community.  We see this constantly in the LDS Church and other Christian Churches who tolerate all kinds of sin and depravity in their mist while excluding people who dare to call out sin.

Niceness and Pride

The cult of nice is a perfect example of pride corrupting Christianity from the inside out.  The cult of nice allows Christians to believe in their moral superiority without having to live a superior life.  There are lots of fat girls, who commit the sin of gluttony, who think they have a right to a great man just because they are nice to him.  There are lots of dorky men who think they have a right to date the hot girl just because they are nice to her.  In these cases it is the pride of their so called niceness that makes them believe they have a right to something better than they have earned.

Pride is: believing the rules don’t apply to us and believing we are special snowflakes.  When sinners refuse to repent they demonstrate pride.  They believe they are not held to the same standards everybody else is and Heavenly Father will overlook their bad behavior.  At the same time, when we refuse to disapprove of sin, we show pride.  The refusal to disapprove of sin is pride because we show that we believe the sinners don’t need to repent.  We enable sin by refusing to disapprove of it.  The cult of nice and its refusal to disapprove of sin is pride because it encourages sinners to stay in a state of sin and allows them to corrupt us with their continued presence.

Prideful nice people demonstrate pride when they criticize so called mean people for calling out sin.  Many times a so called nice person will tell a Christian who calls out sin, he is mean because he was un-inclusive and acted judgmental.  In this case the proud nice person is using his so called niceness as a weapon to shame a member of the church who called out sin.

It is the prideful nice who allow SJW infiltration into our communities.  Followers of the cult of nice give SJW’s a platform to enter, corrupt and conquer religious communities.  SJW’s are like vampires, they need somebody to invite them in.  Followers of the cult of nice are those most likely to invite SJW’s into our communities and allow them to seize power.

It is the proud cuckservative who refuses to resist SJW’s after they enter into our communities.  It is the cuckservative who doesn’t want to appear mean and exclusive who allows SJW’s to continue to infect and destroy our communities.  It is the proud cuckservative who is a member of the cult of nice who says the Christian who opposes SJW infiltration is mean over a “difference of opinion.”

Good is Superior to Nice

As Christians we must focus on living good lives.  We must strive to obey god’s commandments.  We must also resist sin and the sinful from corrupting our communities.  We must make the difficult decisions and accept that members of the cult of niceness will call us names, like “mean” and “not nice.”  We must resist any SJW entry into our community even if it forces us to be “mean.”  We must make hard decisions even when it isn’t the “nice” thing to do.  By focusing on goodness instead of niceness we will be able to defend our church and civilization from forces trying to destroy it.

About Jeffrey Johnson

Jeffrey writes about the issues facing Mormons who are just trying to get through life. He focuses on how men can be better men, how to apply the Gospel to our daily lives, how members of the church can have more success in their dating lives, and most importantly Utah Utes football. View all posts by Jeffrey Johnson →

http://www.redgulls.com/2016/01/04/the-cult-of-nice/

Too conservative to vote for Trump? - By Greg Richards

Some of those who think of themselves as "conservatives" have become as smug and self-regarding as liberals.  And for as little reason.

How has the conservative movement – if there is one - advanced the conservative argument with the public since, say, 2010, when Republicans took over the House?

• Have there been hearings with doctors testifying to retiring because of Obamacare?  No.
• Have there been hearings of middle Americans effectively losing their health insurance because of the huge increase in deductibles?  No.
• Have there been hearings of parents of children killed by illegal immigrants?  No.
• Have there been hearings of relatives of people killed by jihadis?  No.
• Have there been hearings on the impact of those immigrants who want to replace the Constitution with the Koran?  No.
• Have there been hearings of people who have been replaced by immigrants in their jobs?  No.
• Have there been hearings of college graduates who cannot find jobs?  No.
• Have there been hearings on the budget?  No.
• Have there been hearings on Common Core, highlighting what is in it?  No.
• Have there been press conferences by Republican leaders with a whiteboard showing the size of the deficit and the growth of the federal debt?  No.
• Have conservatives used the powerful positions gained by Republican majorities first in the House and then in the Senate to advance conservative ideas; to educate the public in the destruction caused by liberal policies; in short, to advance the conservative argument?  No.

Donald Trump has brought all these subjects before the public in the public space and has absorbed all the calumny from liberal institutions and from many “conservatives” for doing so.  That is, until they realize that the public is with him on these issues.

And now “conservatives” who have stood idly by while Obama has been transforming the country cannot bring themselves to support Trump because...they are upset at his campaigning techniques?  Is that it?  “Conservatives” are too fastidious?

The American Experiment is at risk, the future of Western civilization is in the balance, we have a warrior in the field who is raising the public to fight for both, and...you are abandoning the fight?  You are abandoning your place in the line and going home?  I’ve got news for you: Trump is a gentleman.  He fights, but he is a gentleman.  He is no closer to Hitler than Franklin Roosevelt was.

If “conservatives” care about the country, they must vote for Trump.  The hour for America is very, very late, and that is partly the result of the pusillanimity of “conservatives.”

Those of us who want to bring down liberalism – which is destroying America – are behind Trump 100%.  We are making history in this election.

What do you want history to say about you?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/07/too_conservative_to_vote_for_trump.html#ixzz4FThaX48N
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook

Jerry Pournelle on free trade - by Vox Day

Thanks to his There Will Be War series, Jerry Pournelle was one of my biggest intellectual influences as a teenager. If you want to ensure that your teenage sons have an antidote to the progressive and globalist nonsense in which they are engulfed by the mainstream and conservative medias, you simply cannot do better than give them a book or three from that series; the educational aspect of TWBW was the reason it was my absolute top priority to get it back in print. We've got seven of the original nine back in print already, and we'll have the rest out by the end of the year.

Now Jerry is turning his still-formidable intellect towards one of the great questions of the day: free trade. It is of particular import for conservatives:

One reason Conservatives are advised by Conservative leaders to disagree with Trump is his position on Free Trade. The problem for me is that I do not see Free Trade, particularly laissez faire Free Trade, as necessarily Conservative at all,

The advantages of Free Trade are lower prices for stuff. That means they are more cheaply produced. As the economist David Ricardo wrote, there is a principle of comparative advantage that coupled with free trade guarantees maximum profits for when there are no trade restrictions, and impediments to free trade are supposed to be mutually disadvantageous.

But do understand, what is conserved is lower prices. Nor social stability. Not communities. Not family life. Indeed those are often disrupted; it’s part of the economic model. Under free trade theory, it’s better to have free trade than community preservation, better to have ghost towns of people displaced because their jobs have been shipped overseas; better to have Detroit as a wasteland than a thriving dynamic industrial society turning out tail finned Cadillacs and insolent chariots and supporting workers represented by rapacious unions in conflict with pitiless corporate executives.

The theory of free trade includes liquidity: liquidity in capital flow, and liquidity in labor relocation.

What was conserved by turning Detroit into a wasteland? How was that conservative? Wouldn’t it be more conservative to argue that if everyone pays a little more for stuff made here, by people who work here, we are better off than having it made south of the border and inviting our people to go work there at their prevailing wages?

Go further. You don’t have to move. We’ll pay you for not working and you don’t have to move. Of course we’ll have to raise taxes on those who do work to pay those people no longer working, but that’s life. But after unemployment benefits work out – in my days the government would pay you $26 a week for 26 weeks – you’re in trouble. So much so that welfare benefits kept being raised. Food stamps, which became larger and bought more items. Negative income tax. And if you dropped out of the labor force – no longer looking for a job – you are no longer unemployed. The unemployment rate just went down. You stopped looking for a job. Of course you don’t have a job – you are certainly not employed – but you aren’t unemployed and don’t count toward the unemployment rate. I wouldn’t have thought that sort of lying to the people by government officials was a very Conservative thing to do at all.

Would a 15% tariff on cars have saved Detroit? It would mean that I would have had to pay about $5000 more for my 1988 Ford Eddie Bauer V8 Explorer I bought in 1999. I could have afforded that. And I suspect that I’ve paid more in income taxes sent to welfare recipients in Detroit than that. Is paying people not to work more Conservative than trying to keep their jobs – and manufacturing capabilities and potential here, bot dismantling it and leaving its former site to rust away – Conservative?

And is encouraging people not to work – at least making it easier and more possible – building a Conservative nation?

What, precisely, is being conserved here?

At the core of the intellectual case for free trade is the idea that Say's Law somehow applies to labor, that the aggregate supply of labor necessarily creates an equal quantity of aggregate demand for labor. Hence the claims that since those who had been employed by technologically outdated buggy whip manufacturers found jobs working for automobile manufacturers, those who no longer work for corporations that went offshore will find them doing something else.

But this is a complete failure of logic. The buggy whip workers were able to go to work for the auto manufacturers because those factories were located in their home states. A Detroit auto worker cannot go to work for a Korean or a German manufacturer, or even for a US automaker who sets up a plant in Mexico.

Free trade is, in fact, intrinsically anti-conservative, which of course is why revolutionaries such as Karl Marx have historically favored it.

I should also mention that There Will Be War Vol. VI is now out in ebook, and Vols I and II are now available in a hardcover omnibus edition.

Vox Popoli: Jerry Pournelle on free trade

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/back-to-normal-beginning-a-discussion-of-free-trade/

Michael Moore explains 5 reasons Donald Trump will be the next President:

5 Reasons Trump will win

Michael Moore explains 5 reasons Donald Trump will be the next President:

1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.

I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.

From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream!

 And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

2. The Last Stand of the Angry White Man.

Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyoncé stormed on the field at this year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the humanity!

That’s a small peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the thing that as Trump says, “bleeds through her eyes or wherever she bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop!

3. The Hillary Problem.

Can we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I actually like Hillary – a lot – and I think she has been given a bad rap she doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.

Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies.

But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

4. The Depressed Sanders Vote.

Stop fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton – we’re voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in ’08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed vote” – meaning the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He doesn’t volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS.

Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her  — and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.

5. The Jesse Ventura Effect.

Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’ time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad.

And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like.

Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump.

It's amusing to see how Moore can, despite himself, see some of the relevant issues, and yet fail to understand them. And it's all so typical of an American liberal to vow one thing and then rationalize doing the other. But as wrong as he is about nearly everything, even Moore can see the Trump train barreling down the line; it's a testimony to the herd-following nature of journalism that so few journalists have cottoned onto it yet.

Of course, there are at least seven reasons Trump will win, and Moore left out the two biggest, Immigration and Islam, which, though related, are two separate categories. Every time there is a shooting or an attack of any kind, anywhere in the USA or the West, Donald Trump picks up support, because everyone knows that Hillary Clinton isn't going to do anything about either Immigration or Muslims in America.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/07/5-reasons-trump-will-win.html?m=1

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

The coming Trumpslide

Historical model predicts Trump will win the general election in a landslide: 

The odds of Donald Trump becoming America’s next president currently range from 97 percent to 99 percent.... Norpoth predicts that Trump has a 97 percent chance of beating Hillary Clinton and a 99 percent chance of beating Bernie Sanders.

Norpoth announced his prognostication on Monday night during Stony Brook Alumni Association event at the SUNY Global Center in Manhattan.

“The bottom line is that the primary model, using also the cyclical movement, makes it almost certain that Donald Trump will be the next president,” Norpoth said, according to The Statesman. “When I started out with this kind of display a few months ago, I thought it was sort of a joke,” the professor told the alumni audience, according to the student newspaper. “Well, I’ll tell you right now, it ain’t a joke anymore.”

“Trump beats Hillary 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent” in terms of popular vote.

Well, it's obviously now time for all those pragmatic Republicans whose only concern is electability to get on the Trump train, isn't it. After all, we have been repeatedly assured that principles are not important,winning elections is important.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-coming-trumpslide.html

http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/24/political-science-professor-odds-of-president-trump-range-between-97-and-99/

Why Grit Matters More Than Talent - By John Glenn

Angela Duckworth's new book 'Grit' persuasively makes the case that effort counts twice as much as talent.

Angela Duckworth is a rising star in the world of ideas. The psychologist and 2013 MacArthur Fellowship winner, until recently, was probably most known for her TED talk on grit, which has been viewed well over eight million times.

With the recent publication of her bestselling book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Duckworth has established herself as someone dedicated to using psychological science to help people thrive.

What stands out about the book is that it’s data-driven, yet practical. Duckworth believes just about anyone can acquire the strength of will that leads people to persevere, that enables a Jeff Bezos to leave a cushy career in finance, pursue his passion, and radically change online commerce.

What It Is—And Isn’t

I have to admit I came to this book with skepticism. In my experience, self-help-type memes aren’t very practical. But the decades of research Duckworth synthesizes leaves me convinced that, barring absolute destitution, it’s just not that complicated to set the stage for someone to gain grit.

To really appreciate the concept of grit, you have to understand what it is not. It’s not shallow practice, it’s not mindlessly sprinting up and down the hardwood, nor is it obsessing over impractical goals. While Duckworth defines grit as “passion and perseverance for long term goals,” she does admirable work to unpack what that means. She reveals something that begins with effort and evolves into more of an enlightened pursuit of interests meaningful to you and others.

This is a book that easily outlines those qualities that make some people most likely to succeed in life. But that alone isn’t what makes it remarkable. Where it concerns moms, dads, guardians, and maybe school board members, Grit’s real strength is in the way it uses anecdotes and relatable science to get down to the most basic, mundane actions needed for virtually anyone to produce excellence.

Paragons Of Grit

Duckworth’s book explains skillfully that grit can be developed. But because grit has spent most of its existence as one of those trite terms every high school coach tosses around, Duckworth’s approach had to be exhaustive. To provide ample clarity, Duckworth shares insight from accomplished men and women she calls “paragons of grit.” She also shadows many selective organizations like West Point, the Seattle Seahawks, and the Scripps National Spelling Bee to study how they promote a culture of grit.

One of her immediate targets for scrutiny is the tendency of most people, from competitive CEOs to gangly grade school kids choosing their teammates in recess, to overemphasize talent. People are naturally drawn toward those they consider “naturals”—those who seem to excel effortlessly. In contrast, few prefer those “strivers” who may have to work two to three times as hard to achieve parity with their peers.

Duckworth’s animating theory is that effort counts twice as much as talent. While mountains of data confirm this, one of the studies that lead her to this conclusion was the famous Treadmill Test, one of the longest studies of human development ever. In 1940, Harvard University researchers asked sophomores to run on a treadmill ramped to a steep angle and set to breakneck speed. They wanted to measure “strength of will” in the participants.

After contacting the students every two years since graduation (and over decades), they found time on the treadmill was a “reliable predictor of psychological adjustment throughout adulthood.” In addition to the data, enlightening conversations about work ethic with celebrated potter Warren MacKenzie and Oscar-nominated actor Will Smith also sold Duckworth on the difference that relentless effort makes.

A Startling Caveat

It doesn’t take long before questions about opportunity and access crop up in Grit. After reading about interviews with billionaires and Ivy-league-credentialed others, I awaited answers to questions like: What about children who don’t attend schools with even lousy music or arts programs? Could they one day become gritty enough to perform at Juilliard?

Duckworth admits “opportunities matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck.” That’s a startling caveat coming from the ambassador of grit. But, like Duckworth, I think ideas about the psychology of achievement are nonetheless incredibly useful.

In chapter five Duckworth encourages readers to glean insights from her interviews with the “paragons” and emulate their psychological assets. That’s something anyone with a library card can do, including Kat Cole, who grew up in poverty in a single-parent home and managed to develop immense grit, becoming CEO of Cinnabon in her thirties. There’s also Scott Kaufman, who was thrust into special-education classes because of an early intellectual disability, but found his way at age 14 “into just about every challenge his school had to offer.”

Duckworth really looks at the issue of poverty in her chapter on hope. She does so later in the book as well, when Geoffrey Canada sums up what kids really need to rise out of unfortunate circumstances: “a decent childhood.” But the real gem is when she explores Steve Maier’s experimental work on the neurobiology of hope.

Adversity And Mastery

Maier’s theory is essentially that the brain responds to difficult experiences. He believes that people who experience great adversity in their youth and overcome it on their own develop the capacity to handle adversity later in life. But Maier warns that simply telling someone they can deal with adversity isn’t enough. They have to experience adversity and mastery over it simultaneously.

Maier goes on to comment on the lives of children who experience challenges but not a sense of control:

I worry a lot about kids in poverty…They’re getting a lot of helplessness experiences. They’re not getting enough mastery experiences. They’re not learning: ‘I can do this. I can succeed in that.’ My speculation is that those earlier experiences can have really enduring effects. You need to learn that there’s a contingency between your actions and what happens to you: ‘If I do something, then something will happen.’

Economist Walter Williams offers an insightful yet sobering take on a similar reality in a recent article, “Education Insanity.” He says that a number of inputs must be present in a child’s education (and by extension throughout their youth) for that child to be successful. As Williams puts it, “Someone must make the youngster do his homework, ensure that he gets eight to nine hours of sleep, feed him breakfast and make sure that he behaves in school and respects the teachers. If these minimum requirements are not met, and by the way they can be met even if a family is poor, all else is for naught.”

Purpose Equals Passion

Really what rescues Grit from being a tour through social science research is that it brings intangibles like purpose into the fray. Duckworth is honest enough to admit that purpose often emerges last—after people have already found something they love doing. She also dismisses the all-of-a-sudden metaphors about passively unearthing one’s passion or hearing fireworks go off when an interest suddenly materializes. Instead, Duckworth talks about getting out there, about interacting with the world and experimenting with several interests. That’s a deceptively simple proposition itself; sometimes people just sit on their interests, on self-imposed limits—and not for lack of resources.

If most of us are going to discover our passion, we’re going to have to actively construct and trigger that passion.

If most of us are going to discover our passion, we’re going to have to actively construct and trigger that passion. One of my favorite studies from the book is the Personal Qualities Project. In 1978, Warren Willingham helmed this sprawling and complex endeavor. I’ll sum it up this way. After collecting data on the extent to which high school students could “point to significant accomplishment in science and technology, the arts, sports,” etc., Willingham determined that follow-through was the best predictor of accomplishment in virtually any domain.

Drawing on this model, Duckworth created the “Grit Grid,” which basically uses data about students’ dedication to and advancement in extracurricular activities to measure their capacity to persevere through long-term goals. Encouraging commitment to extracurricular activities should probably be the first order of business for parents and educators. But adults, as well, would benefit from signing up for a couple grit-inducing activities. The extracurricular route, I believe, is also the most potent deterrent to the positive fantasizing kids love to engage in—for example, claiming a bright future as an NFL player, rapper, or corporate attorney without accounting for challenges along the way.

People Are Our Greatest Resource

Perhaps the final lesson of Grit is one point that ties it all together: “developing your personal grit depends critically on other people.” One the one hand, when we meet standouts like Alex Scott, whose family continues her legacy of raising money for cancer research; or art activist Jane Golden, who tirelessly promotes public art programs because she truly believes “Art saves lives”—we understand that people are integral to our passions.

Duckworth wrote the book not only to start a conversation, but also to give people a renewed sense of agency.

On the other hand, Cody Coleman’s path was about growing up in an unstable home in a subpar school district. His brother’s thoughtful advice, some mentoring by a math teacher, and the “ecosystem of support” he later encountered at MIT (which helped him earn a perfect GPA), teach us to see people as our greatest resource.

It appears Duckworth wrote the book not only to start a conversation about grit, but also to give people a renewed sense of agency. The chapters are chock full of quotes that convey messages about the power of realizing one’s potential. By the end, grit becomes a kind of launch pad for other valued elements like positive social functioning, interpersonal character, and intellectual virtue. The book probably could have used more in-progress stories about ordinary people like Cody who followed a rough road to grit. Still, Grit succeeds in its theme that neither disadvantage, learned helplessness, nor complacency can’t be overcome.

John Glenn holds a PhD in English from the University of Florida. He is now an assistant professor of English at Atlanta Metropolitan State College, and his writings have appeared in The Birmingham News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Library Journal.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/22/why-grit-matters-more-than-talent/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=5b4ad7f5ed-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-5b4ad7f5ed-83795033

Donald Trump: A Working Stiff in a Brioni Suit - By Peggy Ryan

The establishment's in meltdown, the media's on suicide watch, and the donor class are sobbing uncontrollably on their therapist's couch.  The reason: Donald J.  Trump is the 2016 Republican nominee.  Yep, the billionaire media star the people can't get enough of and Washington can't get rid of has closed the deal.

So how did this happen?  Lord knows Washington royalty threw everything they have at this guy, but all the king's money and all the king's men can't knock Trump off his Mexican-funded wall.
The left's explanation for Trump's staying power is voter anger, but we've been Hulk-pissed for years, so what's different in 2016?  The difference is that we the people have one of our own to lead, someone we trust to break the government chains and free the American people from establishment despotism.

Granted, no one thought the people's liberator would show up in a private jet and then switch to his personal limo, but that's our guy.  And if you'd told me any time before June 2015 that I'd support a guy who's been working the system for most of his career, funding the very leeches who are kneecapping the American people, I'd have called you crazy.

Yet here I am, all in for the Donald.  Not because of his very public confession at the outset of his campaign that he himself is a no-good, corrupt, establishment type – that was not exactly an endearing admission.  Nor was it his sincere, heartfelt contrition, because I'm pretty sure that never happened.

So why?  Why, oh why are we letting this political neophyte with no government experience and a shady background hijack the American political process?  The answer: he's one of us, a working stiff living in the real world of everyday.

Okay, technically, Trump's not a working stiff.  He's hardly in a dead-end job living paycheck to paycheck.  But despite his billions, Trump shows up to work every day and puts in eight to twelve hours.  He personally oversees his projects, walks job sites, and sacrifices personal and family time to meet deadlines and make payrolls.   

This is where the Washington elite will never get it, because they have no point of reference for actual work.  Their careers are rooted in words, volumes of empty rhetoric.  There's no passion in their lives, no driving ambition, no actual product to inspire personal pride.

Enter Donald Trump, a man who loves work, values the dollar, and strives for perfection.  A guy who not only owns up to his previous establishment status, but touts it as a plus, an insider who can blow the lid off the government con.  He's like the mobster who goes state's evidence: he knows where the bodies are buried, and yeah, that's a good thing.

But beyond his insider connection, it's Trump's connection with the people that gives him staying power.  If you want to see the magic firsthand, attend a rally.  As Trump likes to say, these rallies are love-ins, thousands of cheering supporters at every event. 
A rally kicks into gear when Trump strolls onto the stage and waves out at the sea of cheering supporters.

"Wow, just wow," Trump says as he approaches the microphone.  He shakes his head in disbelief as he leans on the podium, settles in.  He reaches in his jacket pocket and brings out his notes, though he doesn't use them.  He's in his element, as comfortable with the massive crowds as if he just pulled up a chair to our kitchen table.
T
rump gets right into his speech, "Soooo," he starts and he's off.  He takes up his next point, whatever that may be, but never leaves our side.  One minute he promises to bomb the hell out of ISIS, and then he stops and yells, "I love you, too!" to his audience. 

Inevitably, he'll bring up the border, sparking chants of "Build the wall!  Build the wall!"
"Oh, yeah," Trump says.  "We're gonna build that wall."  Then he leans toward the crowd, his hand cupped over his ear.  "And who's going to pay for the wall?"

"Mexico!" the crowd shouts. 

"One hundred percent," he says over the cheers. 

Trump often boasts that he has the most loyal supporters in the country.  True, but Trump's still up against formidable odds, as the media continues to run a fixed game to shield Hillary from the truth and relentlessly pummel Trump with lies.

Remarkably, Trump survives and thrives despite the Democrat/media merger.  The  inside-the-Beltway crowd is dumbfounded.  In their world, there's no explanation for this voter insanity.

Here's a tip for those of you in the establishment who still don't get it.  Trump's secret, his magic bullet, is hard work.  If those of you in Washington or the media really want an inside look at Trump's world, then get a job – a real job, where you work ten to twelve hours a day, make a product you take pride in, construct a building, or provide stellar service to bring in new customers.  A job where you labor under the same oppressive regulations you've imposed on working people across this country, where Obamacare and burdensome taxes gut your paycheck, where you work longer hours or give up that vacation because this anemic job market offers you no alternative.  Join the day-to-day fight to keep your head above water, to feed a family, and give your kids a future. 

Maybe then you'd appreciate the value of a dollar instead of redistributing billions and trillions as if it's Monopoly cash.  You'd find out that if you don't deliver in the business world, you don't get paid; that if you lie to your customers, they'll take their business elsewhere; and if you tell your clients it's your way or the highway, you'll end up flat broke. 

Nigel Farage, the Brit who led the Brexit revolt, recently drew outrage from the European parliament when he chastised his parliamentary colleagues with the following:

I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or indeed ever created a job.

T
he chamber erupted in a boisterous backlash, but Farage didn't back down, because whether or not any of them ever did hold a "proper" job, it's long forgotten.  Like our government, the U.K. executives are now firmly ensconced on Mahogany Row, salivating over their pending global merger, not a thought for the workers. 

Nigel's 100% right about the disconnect between government and the people.  That's why Trump is so refreshing – a man who actually does hold a proper job as CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company he built, a man who's created tens of thousands of jobs, signed paychecks, and personally supervised quality projects.

Unlike our political elite, Trump didn't get rich taking gifts, bribes, or payoffs from Wall Street or foreign governments.  He's not a career politician with grandiose visions of how they'll someday fix the economy if elected.  No, Trump's the guy who's been there, done that, has real-world experience in business and the know-how to succeed. 
Yet Trump didn't make it to the top and turn his back on the people holding the ladder.  He's an enigma who can sip champagne with the country club crowd yet be as comfortable with the servers and cooks, who says he's more at home with construction workers and cab drivers than society's elite.  Beneath Trump's $6,000 Brioni suit is a regular guy, a man of the people, a working stiff. 
So go to work for our country, Mr. Trump.  Time to put that unparalleled business acumen, New York street smarts, and superior intellectual power to work and make America great again – greater than ever before. 
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/07/donald_trump_a_working_stiff_in_a_brioni_suit.html