Sometimes called the "normal distribution" or "Gaussian distribution", the bell curve is a mathematical way of representing a distribution of data, usually fairly symmetric around the mean, or average, value.
For example, the height of human males is represented well by a bell curve. There are roughly as many people taller than the average as shorter. And the further you get from the average height, the fewer people there are at that height. The example to the right shows one such sampling and even with limited data points, you can see the classic shape of the bell curve forming. The bell curve can be found everywhere in nature and seems to be a fundamental characteristic of our universe.
Now, what does this have to do with politics? These days, it seems to have quite a lot. The bell curve stubbornly opposes a fundamental ideal of today's liberal left: equality. Equality is not a natural consequence of the world. Some people are smarter than others. Some work harder. Some are more attractive, more athletic, more articulate. And each of these qualities affects a person's likelihood of succeeding in life.
My impression is that liberals spend most of their life fighting this fundamental truth, one that is woven deeply into the fabric of our world. Even with historic examples of countries like China, Cuba and the Soviet Union, countries that went to great length to fight the bell curve, liberals continue to believe that this dream is somehow achievable.
The particular bell curve that probably upsets liberals the most is one that plots individual wealth. In a free nation, the natural result of economic activity yields a few poor people, a few rich people and a lot of people somewhere in the middle. This is clearly the case in the US and other mostly-free nations. In nations where economic liberty is diminished, the distribution of wealth is quite different: a lot of poor people and a few very rich people with not much in the middle. Socio-economic mobility is also mostly absent without liberty ... if you weren't born with wealth, you likely will never experience it.
What is revealing and tragically amusing is that liberals talk about changing the shape of a free nation's bell curve by eliminating poverty, however most of their actions are aimed at the rich. As if destroying, confiscating or redistributing the wealth of the rich will redefine the bell curve to just a big lump in the middle. They fantasize about eliminating the wealthy and the poor in one swoop, leaving only a happy egalitarian society wearing sandals and driving hybrids.
Michael Moore recently proposed confiscating the wealth of the 600 richest Americans (a few hundred billion dollars) in order to pay for the deficit and allow more government programs for the poor. This is exactly what Fidel Castro did in 1959 and the result was the destruction of a people who have yet to recover. But history aside, what exactly would the government do with Microsoft? Most of Bill Gates' wealth is in the form of stock in the company he founded (sometimes I think liberals believe his money is just piled up in a vault somewhere, just sitting there being evil). What are the consequences of taking more and more money from the rich? Answer: they become less able to create the wealth that the middle and poor desperately need. Do it a little and you get the US. Do it a lot and you get Italy. Take it to the extreme and you get Cuba.
The bell curve is not a starting point for social engineering. It's not a dial you can turn from Washington. The enlightened, intelligent liberals with such wonderful intentions would be more effective if they applied their abundant energy elsewhere. Mentor an inner city child, donate to a scholarship fund, open a business in a poor neighborhood, become a foster parent, ignore Michael Moore ... the list is long.
