Posted on 12/29/2015 10:32:18 AM PST by Kaslin
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
Or do we?
At the end of a long, bitter political year, with a still grimmer one facing us, shall we take a look?
The Founding Fathers' abstract commitment to equality -- reinforced by the Gettysburg Address -- vexes and perplexes Americans across the political sphere.
We know we're "equal," more or less. But equal on what terms: nature's or the government's?
"Equality" takes on the quality that 21st century politicians assign it according to vote tallies, with backing from the media's noisier voices.
We hear about economic equality; we hear about educational equality; we hear about, let's say, demographic equality. We learn (from those talking about it) that we're apparently deficient as a nation in the ratification of Jefferson's and Lincoln's visions. We're told all the things we still need to do.
The equality balloon collapses with this pinprick: the "need to" part. It feeds the belief that government is supposed to make it all right -- to kiss our hurts and make them go away.
It makes great presidential-year rhetoric, but it doesn't much improve public understanding of the infinite and eternal number of differences among humans. All it does, chiefly, is augment existing discontents, setting citizens against each other. It likewise suggests a previously unsuspected governmental duty -- that of spreading Happiness, obliterating pain and jealousy.
Well.
Hard as modern U.S. government works to slice the pie into 330 million equally sized pieces, inequality persists. It is built into the human condition. We know we're not all the same.
Economic inequality is the easiest version to peddle as a problem that needs solving. We can look around and see that not everyone drives a Mercedes S-class sedan. The billionaire phenomenon rattles many. Why so much money for relatively few people? And what should we do about it, nonetheless? And what's the "right" level of income for the "right" number of Americans? Liberal levelers benefit from the public's inattention to anything but the sermons. Sermons, alas, don't create wealth or new jobs.
Racial "inequality" gets explained -- by white Democrats, chiefly -- as the consequence of cruelty and bigotry at the hands of Republican-voting whites. Tighter government controls and a looser grip on the federal purse are the touted remedies, offered as such without detailed explanation.
Educational disparities seemingly contradict the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. Yet as The New York Times noted in a recent front-page news article, the number of high school graduates goes up even as the number of graduates prepared for college goes down. Something isn't working. If we're so equal, how can achievement rates in college, as in life itself, not grow year by year? Or is that even the right question? Maybe the right question for 2016 is: How much more taxpayer money should we spend on salaries and after-school programs? Or, alternatively, how far can we realistically lower requirements for a college degree?
The essential and inevitable nature of some forms of inequality is a matter upon which the modern politician must never, never remark, at the risk of outraging editorial writers and losing votes. Reality itself has to yield to political necessity -- a sad admission in an age saddled with the failures of politics.
A society's obligation to all, and not just some of, its citizens requires, not just suggests, interventions of one kind and another.
It also requires understanding that equalization of opportunity matters more, and achieves more, than political attacks on those who rise on their own, through work, initiative, and character. These things Jefferson and the Founding Fathers knew, as did Lincoln.
Today the Founders would cry out against treating "equality" as a deity to be tended and enlarged by the high priests of government. In this coming debate, in which those touting bigger government are sure to dominate, candidates shouldn't be spared a fair and honest retort: Just what in Jefferson's name are you talking about?!
Economic inequality is the easiest version to peddle as a problem that needs solving.
Educational disparities seemingly contradict the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.
The above concepts areutter nonsense. The American Dream has never meant to disfigure and cripple the intangible concepts of liberty, justice, tranquility, defense, and promotion of the general welfare into the spreading of government largess. It should never have meant government ensuring the protection of home values, college funds, retirement accounts, savings, executive severance packages, affordable healthcare, homeownership, lifetime employment, corporate wealth, political careers, and union benefits.
Below is a paragraph from an essay accurately covering the subject.
“Finally with these and other precedents we come to the founding of our country. Now human rights get synthesized into property as defined most prominently by John Locke and James Madison. Individual property is first of all sourced internally in self protection, opinion, religion, communications, use of abilities to labor physically and mentally, and in conscience. Only by application of these inherent rights does one come to the external and more traditional definition involving those things which man was to have dominion over ever since the Creation. Therefore the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happinessâ€. Here we have the internal attributes of property on which all external manifestations depend. “
Equal opportunities - NOT equal outcomes.
Yes, but according to the politicians, persons given the equal OPPORTUNITY for an education and squanders it are not slackers to be scorned, but helpless victims. Yes, even after spending many millions of hard earned tax dollars to educate these persons so that they may become productive members of society,
we must pay many more millions to support them and pay for more children who will be even bigger slackers. Before I get attacked as being a racist, please consider I mentioned no particular race as I believe that this particular disease cuts across all races and genders.
After all, why should they pay attention, study, work hard, and excel when the guvmint will give me someone else’s money to live on?
No, we must demonize those who achieve, take what they have and redistribute it to those less fortunate(lazy, undisciplined, incompetent) among us. That about right, Bernie, Hillary?
That sounds about like it.
CREATED equal, under the law.
They are created equal IN THAT they have certain unalienable rights.
Clearly, no one is created precisely equal to anyone else in terms of abilities, intelligence, interests, and so on.
Unfortunately, that is just how the writing has been perverted, such that many people now beleive that “anything Jack has, I should have, too - and if I don’t, then the government should take it away from him and give it to me.”
right
at CREATION all are equal under the law.
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