LIBERTY and/or EQUALITY
12/18/2019
The United States was founded on the two fundamental principles of Liberty and Equality. The Founders were reacting to an English monarchy that considered them less than English and an English colony that was obligated to do as Mother England and the monarchy demanded. As a result, they were sending a message in the Declaration of Independence that, at birth, all humans have EQUAL value and that their God given inalienable rights were to life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness. By saying all men were "created equal" Thomas Jefferson intended to abolish the system of hereditary aristocracy, where some individuals were born as lords and others were ordinary. And the emphasis on liberty was meant to make plain that the nation and its citizens were asserting their freedom from England AND their freedom to define for themselves the values by which they would thereafter live. In other words, the founders asserted their liberty to define each person as equal in value and station at birth.
There is little doubt that, since its inception, of the two, Liberty and Equality, it has been Liberty that has been asserted as the nation’s primary value. There are those, who, for many reasons, wish to invert that history and replace Liberty with Equality as the prime value. The able historian, Victor Davis Hansen calls the attempts to raise the principle of Equality over the principle of Liberty as the Progressive Project which he says was initiated by Woodrow Wilson
You can listen to his one hour interview here: https://youtu.be/-4Gkm77usT0. (The entire interview is worthwhile but if you just want to hear his comments about the Progressive Project you can listen from minutes 28-35).
Before embarking on a discussion of the various changes to the meaning of Equality, let’s address the meaning of Liberty to the Founders and Framers. What we have as a guide to their meaning of Liberty is nothing less than the Constitution of the United States. Nearly the complete text of that document defines the liberties of the citizens and the limits on the liberties of the government. There is little doubt that the Framers of the Constitution believed several things about Liberty.
1. Liberty was not an absolute wherein people could do anything they wanted. Most obviously, they would be constrained by the very document that provided their liberties, the Constitution.
2. Liberty went hand in hand with responsibility: responsibility to their God, to their fellow man and for themselves and their own actions. Personal responsibility was inherent in the concept of Liberty. Without it, Liberty would become wanton, unrestrained and unprincipled.
3. One of the most important aspects of Liberty was that a person’s Liberty did not extend to the point of constraining the Liberty of another. Laws and political systems were adopted to protect the Liberty of all, with the notable exception of slavery. (We leave the discussion of why slavery was not immediately abandoned for another discussion except to say that it was the principles of Equality and Liberty enshrined in our founding documents and the brave people who fought for those principles that eventually ended slavery.)
While the principles of Liberty are made pretty explicit, other than asserting that every person is, at birth, of equal value in the eyes of God and mankind, very little else is made of this equality. It is clear that what is meant is equality of personhood. In addition, there is the presumption, as part of the principle of Liberty, that people be Equal in possessing the Liberty to define and pursue that which would make them happy.
The Framers knew, as any thoughtful person knows, that individual differences result in people pursuing different goals for happiness and that such variation and diversity aptly suited the needs of society. They also knew that people are not exactly alike at birth and that life bestows upon us all differing abilities, talents, circumstances, and experiences that can aid or prevent people from equally achieving whatever happiness they choose to pursue.
It was for the very fact that people ARE different that Liberty is so vital. Because of said differences, no one person or group of people should be able to impose upon others their vision of happiness. At its core, Liberty is built upon the fact that individuals differ from each other. And if groups of people were to agree upon anything, for it to work, they must freely choose to agree. Liberty, therefore, is the foundation of unity, to freely choose to join together. And unity is necessary for the establishment of principles by which a people allow themselves to be governed. Equality, as a foundational principle, is dependent upon Liberty. Liberty is NOT similarly dependent upon Equality. Equality is the result of every person being endowed with Liberty. The Founders understood that Equality must be subordinate to Liberty for without the freely chosen agreement of the people as to the Equality of all people, there would be no equality. And that is why, since the inception of the nation, Liberty has been emphasized over Equality.
With respect to Equality, we must first acknowledge that the demand for greater Equality has always been based upon the perception of the inequality of Liberty. And this perception was not incorrect at its inception and at various points throughout history. With respect to the equality of personhood and with regard to affording people the equal rights of citizenship and the right to pursue what goals they will regardless of race or gender, the movement toward greater equality has benefitted the nation. People of all political persuasions fought and even died to bring these important changes to the nation.
Now come a group of people, steeped in Liberty, taking their Liberty for granted, who now wish to create a nation in which Equality is raised to the level of Liberty. But whereas some demands for greater equality have been made in the service of enhancing the Liberty of our citizens, the new Progressive Project has used the concept of Equality for an entirely different purpose: to regulate and control the society and its people. The Progressive Project is a step by step program based on the assumption that a just society should seek to eliminate any and all inequality and the government should take whatever actions necessary to do so, even if it requires infringing on individual Liberty.
If the Progressive Project goal was to make Equality of more central importance as an American principle, then it first needed to redefine Equality. As a first step, it became necessary to demonstrate that people were ”unequal”. And since people become, after birth, unequal in nearly every way except as originally defined (personhood and social rank), that was not difficult. But it was also so obvious as to be meaningless. A different kind of “unequal” had to be created. Equality could not just be about equality of personhood or rank. It had to be demonstrable. And the only way to demonstrate an inequality was to examine the outcomes. Consequently, equality of personhood and rank became equality of outcome.
To the extent that such outcomes revealed disenfranchisement or prevention of full participation in governance, inequality of outcome seemed relevant. However, at some point, the principle of unequal outcomes became unfettered from governance and extended to virtually all aspects of society from test scores to access to social clubs to participation in the military and to wages paid for work. Every extension of the principle of unequal outcomes was invariably associated with an infringement on individual Liberty but it was never spoken of as such. In fact, it was represented as an improvement of Liberty.
Because individual differences were a given, a case had to be made that an inequality of outcomes existed BECAUSE of certain specific individual differences. Consequently, large groups had to be defined and differentiated from all other groups on the basis of one characteristic that was not shared by any other group. The tactic was to first use the legitimate inequalities of race and gender. These inequalities clearly had a negative effect on the Liberty of some and their amelioration was justified. However, as above, the principle of unequal outcomes began to be applied to situations that did not infringe on individual liberties at all. So, in addition to redefining equality in terms of outcomes, Liberty itself had to be determined in terms of outcomes. That is, if people had unequal outcomes it had to be because their Liberty to achieve outcomes was infringed upon. This, of course, overlooked all the many other differences that lead to differential outcomes. Stubbornly, individual difference could still explain disparate outcomes and presented an obstacle to those who wished to redefine inequality in these new ways.
In order for the new definitions to be successful, all those other individual differences among all members of the defined “unequal group” had to be ignored. In other words, a stereotype of the victimized group had to be created. All women, for example, were considered to be “equally unequal” regardless of individual differences among them in characteristics such as intelligence, ambition, risk taking, determination, or success in achieving their individual pursuits. To be effective, all members of the unequal group had to be seen as suffering the consequences of the inequality equally. And, furthermore, the group to which they were to be compared, the one that didn’t share the characteristic that made them unequal, had to be seen as equally benefitting from the absence of that characteristic.
Once one discounts or obscures the effects of individual differences, a particularly virulent concept emerges. Progressives maintained that people were NOT that different. Everybody wants the same things in life and if they wanted it, they should have an equal opportunity to get it. And, they suggested, that if they were unable to get what they wanted, they could have gotten it were it not for the fact that hateful prejudices were employed to prevent some from availing themselves of those opportunities. The concept of equality of opportunity had to be changed. It was no longer that people were free to pursue their own definition of happiness in their own fashion. Instead it became a truth that people achieved or failed to achieve their goals not because of the choices they made but rather because they possessed some inherent characteristic that prevented their success. That characteristic created, they said, an impediment to their pursuit of happiness and, therefore, equality of opportunity did not exist for them.
What followed were laws by which government essentially imposed quotas for participation in college acceptances, hiring practices, participation in social organizations and more. Again, individual differences were ignored. Merit and performance were no longer considered relevant because, it was declared, years of prejudicial behavior had to distorted individual performance and had to be corrected. Notice, here, that individual responsibility for choices made have long since disappeared. We now even have laws being ignored (bail requirements, jail time, and illegal border crossings, for example) because people, we are told, are not responsible for their choices, others are.
Even when discrimination laws were passed to prevent any such prejudices from operating, other reasons were invented for why inequality existed. For example, poor people were not able to avail themselves of certain opportunities to the extent wealthier people were. So, wealth must be equalized. The concept of race was again employed as Progressives complained about “white privilege” and that the mere fact of being white made life so much easier. Again, this argument depended on obscuring the differences among white people and treating all non-whites as being negatively impacted in precisely the same way by the very fact of not being white.
A case had to be made that the differences among people accounted for disparate access to opportunities. Stories and memes were created. The concept of the glass ceiling. The false notion of unequal pay for women was created and still is perpetuated regardless of being debunked for years now. The notion was invented that a fair society would have representation in all career positions filled by people with certain characteristics equal to the frequency of that characteristic in the population. If 20% or the population was black, 20% of college admissions should be of blacks; 51% of women in the population should mean 51% of executive positions or government positions should be filled by women, and so on.
Once the concepts of Equality and Opportunity were redefined, many more inequalities came into existence. A case had to be made for rectifying all these new inequalities. The case was a moral one and eventuated in the notion of Social Justice. Inequality became an injustice. It was determined that inequality was always the result of some injustice rather than simply the result of individual differences or preferences and those people who maintained otherwise were themselves labeled as prejudiced or bigoted. A male computer coder at Google suggested that the reason fewer women worked as computer coders at tech companies may not be because of discrimination against women but, perhaps, because fewer women were interested in that as a career path. He was ostracized, maligned and berated by his co-workers and the media for even suggesting that individual differences may account for the disparity.
Speaking of disparities, Progressives under the last administration created the concept of “disparate impact’ whereby even though practices or policies applied by employers or landlords, for example, are formally neutral and unbiased, if the result is that fewer members of a protected class participate, the practice or policy is deemed discriminatory. In short, it is the effect of the policy and not its intent that creates the discrimination. In other words, a policy is unjust and discriminatory wherever outcomes are unequal.
We are being inundated with ideas that are very much part of the Progressive Project. These ideas divide people up by those who possess certain qualities or characteristics and those who don’t. When there came to be so many, Progressives created the concept of “intersectionality” whereby, for example, a Hispanic man whose gender identity is that of a woman (trans-woman) can be discriminated against because he is a trans-person and a woman and an Hispanic. The idea of intersectionality is becoming difficult for Progressives, however, because the interests of women are sometimes at odds with the interests of Hispanics and both at odds with the interests of trans-women. A recent example is of trans-women competing against women in athletic events.
We are at the point where any characteristic can be used to pit one group against another. Merely claim that there is unequal opportunity based upon prejudice or unequal outcomes due to disparate impact and social justice demands that such inequality be addressed and remedied. Obese individuals can be pitted against non-obese. All that is required is to demonstrate that there are fewer obese people in a certain job, say Fitness Instructor, than there are represented in the population as a whole and we then have a situation of inequality that demands Equality.
The Progressives argue that enhancing Equality enhances Liberty. But when Liberty is defined as it is above, then the Equality as defined by Progressives absolves people of individual responsibility, infringes upon the Liberty of others in order to correct the perceived inequalities, and appears to no longer have constraints on what is considered an inequality. Further, they have created an environment where honest disagreement with their positions is considered bigoted, unworthy of a civil response, and social justice demands that it be punished. Even the First Amendment to the Constitution has been set aside by Social Justice Warriors who seek to “cancel” the right of individuals who disagree with them to speak publicly.
Finally, because people are different, because they make different choices, they experience different outcomes in their pursuit of happiness. Because people all see the world differently, the only way they can be made perfectly equal is to impose, by intimidation and force, that Equality upon them. The way to get all people to understand that some inequalities must be remedied but not all should be, is not to change definitions or perform sleight of hand policies that infringe on individual liberty. When government imposes through intimidation or force, it restricts Liberty. Only by the collective and freely chosen agreement of the people can true Equality come to exist. It appears that some people do not want to wait for people to see the world as they do. They have created the Progressive Project and have attempted to fundamentally transform the United States. Thankfully, it appears saner minds are prevailing and our Liberty, though tenuous, is yet preserved.
