Creating Equal? It’s Just Not Possible

Creating Equal? It's Just Not Possible by Ryan Setliff

I simply don't believe that anybody is equal period. There is no divine "Thou shall be equal" command, despite how innate and sacrosanct such a postulate is to modern man's egalitarian intuition. Mel Bradford avows:

Let us have no foolishness indeed. Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself — Equality, with the capital “E” — is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle. Contrary to most Liberals, new and old, it is nothing less than sophistry to distinguish between equality of opportunity (equal starts in the “race of life”) and equality of condition (equal results). For only those who are equal can take equal advantage of a given circumstance. And there is no man equal to any other, except perhaps in the special, and politically untranslatable, understanding of the Deity. Not intellectually or physically or economically or even morally. Not equal! Such is, of course, the genuinely self-evident proposition. Its truth finds a verification in our bones and is demonstrated in the unselfconscious acts of our everyday lives: vital proof, regardless of our private political persuasion. Incidental equality, engendered by the pursuit of our other objectives, is, to be sure, another matter. Inside the general history of the West (and especially within the American experience) it can be credited with a number of healthy consequences: strength in the bonds of community, assent to the authority of honorable regimes, faith in the justice of the gods.

Contrary to the egalitarian fantasies of liberals, it is the height of folly to even bother distinguishing between equality of opportunity and equality of condition. There are no equal starts in the race of life nor are there equal results. Besides, “only those who are equal can take equal advantage of a given circumstance,” surmises Mel Bradford. No two men — not even twin brothers — are equal whether it be an equality of intellectual faculties, physical prowess, or economic status.

Even Marxism’s greatest intellectual champions in a moment of sobriety are remiss to admit that there is always going to be something to be envious or jealous of — even in an egalitarian communist society.

Being “not equal” seems to be the real, inherently self-evident proposition, though the reality of inequality is obfuscated by those who see the world through the clouded lens of egalitarian ideology.

As Jefferson proclaims the self-evidence of equality in the Declaration of Independence, his personal writings contradict or perhaps more aptly qualify the nature of his affirmation he so boisterously proclaimed. We are created equal, perhaps as defined by our natural rights if one acquiesces with such doctrine.

Within Christian teaching, there is also an equality in a politically untranslatable understanding of the Deity, and also equality before God in the impartial judgment (Galatians 3:28, 1 Peter 1:17). But even that sense of equality has qualifiers. Foremost, the Scriptures make it clear that those not of faith in Jesus Christ hardly have equal standing with those that do. Second, the Scriptures make it clear that there are degrees of reward in heaven on the basis of good works through the Holy Spirit and our labors for His kingdom. For this reason, the Scriptures exhort the believer to strive for crowns of life. The transcendent Heaven as revealed by divine revelation presents itself as inherently hierarchical in nature.

In the Federalist #10, James Madison observed that men had “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property.” Madison went onto proclaim,

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.

These innate dissimilarities between men were so critical that Madison further declared, that “the protection of those faculties is the first object of government.” John Adams declared, “Inequalities are a part of the natural history of man.” As Murray and Herrnstein note in the The Bell Curve, “The egalitarian ideal of contemporary political theory underestimates the importance of the differences that separate human beings.” The defects in egalitarian ideology are felt in the hardship and human misery unleashed by the failure of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc to construct prosperous, egalitarian societies. “The egalitarian tyrannies, whether of the Jacobite or the Leninist variety, are worse than inhumane. They are inhuman,” notes Murray and Herrnstein.

Aristotle proclaimed: “All men believe that justice means equality in some sense… The question we must keep in mind is, equality or inequality in what sort of thing.” The founding fathers never saw anything beyond equality before the law amongst citizens as desirable. This is perhaps why John Randolph of Roanoke declared, “I love liberty and I hate equality.” Regarding the election of public officials, James Madison was emboldened enough to advise, “Leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi.” Madison wasn’t in favor of some entrenched class possessed of special political privilege or a hereditary oligarchy, but rather a meritocratic system that allowed the best and brightest to thrive, and rise by the diligent utilization of their innate faculties, natural and acquired talents, and training.

Jefferson lauded public education, and it compels some to suggest he was an egalitarian with qualification, as he suggested that the “best geniuses” should be “raked from the rubbish annually” by competitive examinations and firm grading. But his motives for supporting education of the general populace were in part to enable the brightest within the poor classes to raise their economic and social standing, and this served society at large by impeding the entrenchment of a special class or heriditary oligarchy.

John Adams declared “natural aristocracy is a fact essential to be considered in the institution of government.” Adams however never shared Jefferson’s optimism about human nature and knew that virtue was not to be equated with intelligence.

In any case, it is clear that the founding fathers, by and large, championed a meritocratic civil society. Collectively, the founding father's conception of “aristocracy” certainly embodied rule by the best, but their vital qualification was that it was a “natural aristocracy of virtues and talents.” Therefore, it was not a political solution to be imposed on society by the body politic like the estates of Old Europe. Instead, the "natural aristocracy" entails political recognition of where to draw the lines of political intervention in allowing the natural society to thrive—and by implication the natural aristocracy therein. Therefore, the founding fathers by and large did not seek the establishment of an entrenched elite whose power was fortified by an artificial system of political patronage and privilege. Instead, the majority of the founding fathers favored a natural laissez-faire (i.e., hands-off) approach. This meritocratic system was to allow the best men to rise as captains of government, entrepreneurship and industry. Those who constituted the aristoi were not ascertained by birth or privilege, force or fraud — but by the exploitation of their natural talents. “Few will deny that there is a natural aristocracy,” avowed John Adams, “of virtues and talents in every nation and every part... Inequalities are a part of the natural history of man.”

Nonetheless, our contemporary societies in America and Europe are now naively embracing a vociferous egalitarian ideology that hides behind “equal opportunity” rhetoric and socialist presumptions. Such leveling schemes ironically turn the so called right of “equal protection” embodied in American constitutional law on its nose. Radical egalitarian ideology applied to public policy seeks to change the legal status of various peoples precisely on the basis of colour, class, creed, and gender, and in turn seeks to give preferential treatment based on those demarcators. It was rationalized for any number of reasons: to redress past historical injustices; to unseat "institutional racism;" and the more banal reason that inequality is simply deemed as unfair.

Today, amongst the modern statist liberal intelligentsia, the ideological obsession with “creating equal” is an experiment inherently at odds with human nature and the condition of freedom, and it also reveals the subtle hypocrisy of liberal elites and their politics of guilt. The much-heralded civil rights proposition of being “judged by the content of one’s character” falls on its face as an Orwellian platitude, given that the civil rights agenda today clearly involves group rights and preferential treatment for select groups or minorities.

In the United States, we have come to accept democratic republicanism as the underlying philosophy of our system of governance. Nonetheless, this political philosophy does not entail adherence to either programatic utopian schemes that effectuate the ideals of radical egalitarianism or fraudulent claims to superiority and political privilege for a protected political class. As Christian thinker C.S. Lewis opined,

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in government. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

In contrast to the leveling schemes of liberals, traditional conservatives strongly prefer a society of order based on a natural aristocracy that acknowledges human inequality as a reality — that is, inequality of humans as individuals, not as members of a race. The laissez-faire meritocratic system is most compatible with the human condition. For the better part of American history, the natural aristocracy was allowed to thrive. Wilhelm Roepke describes the aristoi:

We need a natural nobility whose authority is, fortunately, readily accepted by all men, an elite deriving its title solely from supreme performance and peerless moral example and invested with the moral dignity of such a life.... The way to it is an exemplary and slowly maturing life of dedicated endeavor on behalf of all, unimpeachable integrity, constant restraint of our common greed, proved soundness of judgment, a spotless private life, indomitable courage in standing up for truth and law, and generally the highest example.... No free society, least of all ours, which threatens to degenerate into mass society, can subsist without such a class of censors. 1

Today, the managerial state has taken to the nauseating task of trying to equalize or level everything from incomes to professional status based on completely arbitrary and unequal standards — but ironically always in the interests of equality and fairness. Equality has and will always remain a revolt against human nature.