The Email

 

On 9/1/2024 I saw an email on my phone alerting conservatives like me that Democrats this election cycle are pushing identity over merit favored by Republicans. That trend is true but is incomplete, not the whole story. Words matter. The concept identity matters for conservatives too, so I will not cede this important word as solely the property of Democrats.

 

The kind of identity that Progressives are asserting is group identity, but they forget that individual identity is a concept of use to Republicans and the American public. All people, smart or dumb, good, or evil, individuator or nonindividuator, loner or joiner, cannot exist without a sense of purpose, of being worthwhile. This critical need for a positive sense of self-identity must be found and latched onto for each person to be able to proceed in life. The respective former group mostly feel good about themselves, and they say so, and their self-assessment is reasonably accurate. The respective latter group have no or little right to feel good about themselves, based on their habitual sinning and lying, but they cannot go on without a sense of hope, so they lie as a way of life accusing the good of being evil, and self-identify as the good, though they are not.

 

By lying as a way of life the dumb, evil, nonindivifuting, popular sinners are able to go on living because it is near impossible to penetrate the web of lies they have expressed about others and themselves. These are persons of unearned pride, and these second-handers, mooches, parasites and robber are as denounced by Ayn Rand.

 

These mendacious, phony groupists are empty, immoral; they excel at self-deception. Their entire consciousnesses or self-identity is a lie. They have nothing personal to identify with so they trot out their group identities, for public approbation, something to hand their hats on. They have grabbed onto and adopt group identity as the fig leaf to cover their naked selves with. They have grasped a plausible, acceptable identity which enable them to like themselves to go on living. They identify with their peer group, their ancestors, their ideological associates, their favorite cause. They might build an identity around proclaiming themselves as aggrieved, marginalized victims, or disenfranchised, aggrieved minorities without privilege or franchise. Their collective identity is one brandished by these joiners to hide the fact that they are persons of little or no personal merit, nobility, artistic excellence, moral depth, or impressive career accomplishment.

 

The person of merit displaying his individual identity is a person that has well earned his individual identity. This would not be the case if he was a shallow, selfish, sexual hedonist concentrating only upon his immediate carnal gratification. This would not be the case if he was inordinately selfish, for the selfish rarely are individualists. They are groupists of unearned self-identity, so they desperately latch onto any passing piece of driftwood (source of group-identity) to keep from drowning. He and they cannot survive without exploiting or cannibalizing others.

 

By contrast, exemplary individual that has earned his stated self-identity, merited by him because of his previous performance as a productive, industrious contributor to society as an artist, a working parent, a loving partner, a neighborhood volunteer, an original thinker, inventor or perhaps is ethically heroic. His sense of self-worth is true, apt, praiseworthy, and substantive. His positive, singular identity is what he has become. He is an impressive human being, normally modest, not swelled-up.