This meme was crafted by some people from Illinois State University, one of whom actually used the name “Lurker,” and they assert a moral claim to copyright (ahistoricality.livejournal.com/2009/08). It is reposted here just as a general reminder to North Americans of how very privileged we are.
Most of us don’t think of most of these things as privileges relative to other North Americans. Only a few of them are expensive enough to be typical of the rich as distinct from the lower middle class, such that when we meet someone who did not have them many of us think “That’s odd—is there a good story behind it?”
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home,
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.
We are a culture of privilege. The U.S. and Canada more than Mexico, perhaps—but this whole continent has a culture of privilege beyond the rest of the world’s dreams. We have this because we jettisoned the feudal system and went straight to democracy, bypassing the whole mess of socialism, and tolerance for the socialist cult as it exists today could yet cause us to lose it. We have to insist: World peace starts with a worldview so democratic, even libertarian, that the only global organization we even want is a mediation service. Which has no governing authority whatsoever, and from which nations whose delegates even babble about overriding national sovereignty with “agendas” for equalizing poverty or overregulation, as has happened at the United Nations recently, really ought to be admitted as non-speaking, non-voting, no-direct-contact-with-other-delegates observer nations for twenty years after any offense. Because the rest of the world have a right to achieve the same level of privilege we have, but even tolerating yammering about achieving equality now by reducing the privileges we’ve developed for ourselves is not going to help anybody. If you want to equalize lack of privilege, you’re never going to get to the level where privileges really do equalize themselves more every year. You need to learn to say “Oh, there they go again,” and just stop taking people seriously, when they babble about redistributing wealth under a totalitarian system that would force equal poverty on everyone blah blah.
Our ancestors started out as savages, barbarians, with no privileges except independence and fortitude. In 1800 most of the people on this continent still didn’t have Bibles, most didn’t know how to read them if they had them, and going by the behavior of the ones who claimed to have read the Bible, most of them didn’t understand what they read. But by acknowledging everyone’s right to swing their arms up to the point at which other people’s noses began, and then standing out of their way, we built the culture of unimaginable privilege. Anyone else can do the same. Some of the poorest nations on Earth are sitting on the most valuable resources. The first step we need to keep recommending to them is to lose their fear of “individualism,” and even of “Protestantism,” and adjust their way of thinking so that they will be able to do what worked for us.
Not everything our ancestors did did work for us. Some things, like slavery and strip mining, worked against us. Try to avoid repeating our mistakes if you want to benefit from the record of our successes. But, even more, try to avoid sticking in the mistakes of wretched, war-torn, feudal-turned-socialist Europe. Most of our ancestors gave up a lot of privileges to get out of the mess that was Europe, and by straightening out their thinking they made it possible for their heirs to enjoy privileges far beyond those they left behind in Europe, and the very last thing we need to do now is listen to drivel about gun bans and censorship and socialist schemes and other rubbish that is poisoning the economies of Europe.
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