In today's United States, in a situation the Founders could not have imagined, the entire system seems rigged to punish success and reward failure. The successful, who hold if not the world on their shoulders, then certainly the economy — something Ayn Rand foresaw quite a while ago — are condemned at every turn, taxed, regulated, called "exploiters," and demeaned as standing in the way of "progress." Meanwhile, the borders are thrown open, illegal entrants are rewarded, students who take crap degrees have their student loans transferred to the taxpayers, and small business owners struggle to keep their businesses open as the cities melt down around them.

Are we being played for chumps?

Let's look at immigration. Under the Biden administration, millions have come into the country illegally. They are rewarded for doing so: They are not screened in any meaningful way; they are shipped to the major city of their choice, where many of these "sanctuary" jurisdictions reward them with benefits and free housing.

See Related: GOP Targets Sanctuary Cities With New Bills in Wake of Laken Riley's Tragic Death

Look at academia. Our once-illustrious universities are utterly failing at their primary purpose: to produce young adults with marketable skills. They offer legions of students useless Underwater Ethnic Dog-Polishing degrees, allow students to rack up six figures in student loans for degrees that don't qualify them to flip burgers, and then petition the government — you and me — to pay off their loans when they can't find jobs.

See Related: Student Loans: Has Joe Biden Ushered in a Constitutional Crisis by Defying Supreme Court?

Look at the cities. In 2020, almost every major city in the nation — overwhelmingly governed by Democrats — exploded into rioting, looting, and violence. The media covered it as "fiery but mostly peaceful." There were billions in property damage. Businesses people spent lifetimes building were destroyed. At least 25 people were killed. One of them was a deliberate, planned political assassination. Most of the rioters who were caught were slapped on the wrist and released.

And the "protestors" are poised, at a moment's notice, to do it again.

See Related: Pro-Hamas Protestors Swarm San Francisco Airport, Block Security Gates

What happened to personal responsibility? When I was a young man, like most young men, I screwed up from time to time. When I did, I would talk to the wisest man I knew — my father. He would tell me what he thought, but that was always tempered with a message: "You got yourself into this. Now get yourself out." Success in any venture cannot come without responsibility — without taking charge of your actions and accepting the consequences of your own decisions. But our system now seems set up to allow people to skip that fundamental responsibility — to say, "It's not my fault! It's racism or transphobia," or name the excuse — anything to avoid accepting responsibility, figuring where one went wrong, and working out how to fix it.

Yes, we are being played for chumps. You can't convince me it's not deliberate. This effort encompasses business owners who worked long hours, went without things, saved, and invested in building a small business, only to see it destroyed in a single night by a mob protesting “injustice.” It encompasses girls on a high school swim team whose chances at valuable scholarships are negated by a biological male teammate who suddenly claims to be a girl after years as a mediocre performer on the XY team. It encompasses – in addition to parents – students who perhaps did a hitch in the military and worked part-time jobs to pay for their university education. Now, they will be stuck picking up the tab for their less responsible fellows. All of this is causing great division in the nation: division between rural and urban, between ethnic groups, between socioeconomic classes, between academics and achievers. What's more, it sure seems that lately, the divide is growing. 

The Left, in particular, is not just unhappy – they are angry. Witness the 2020 destruction of billions of dollars of private property in street riots largely ignored or even tacitly supported by leftists in all levels of government. And very few on the left would dare to propose what seems obvious to conservatives and libertarians – that maybe, just maybe, if these people had achieved something in life, they wouldn’t be so pissed off. Maybe if the system were set up to reward success, to encourage achievement, even just to allow people to keep more of the fruits of their labor — maybe things would be different.

One thing is certain: They can't go on the way they are.