Have you ever pondered the fact that everyone being endowed with equal rights by our creator works out so naturally while the equality of outcome that our Progressive would-b-masters seek to impose is impossible to achieve without treating people differently? Have you ever noticed that whenever the government wishes to give anyone anything they have to first take it from someone else?
Since everyone obviously has different skills, talents, and ambitions people inevitably perform and produce at different levels. Therefore to make everyone end up in the same place it is necessary to hold some back and artificially advance others.
For example if we wanted to treat everyone equally with regard to taxes we would have a flat tax with no deductions as in everyone pays 10%. If you make one million dollars or one thousand dollars you pay 10%. That would be equal treatment before the law and in my opinion that would be fair. However in the Progressives version of a fair tax system designed to promote equality, people who earn different amounts are taxed at different rates. If you earn more you pay more. That may sound good to some, but how is it fair?
In education if equality was really the desired result everyone would be judged by the same standards for admission regardless of race, creed, color or any other mitigating factor. Everyone would take the same tests and everyone would be graded exactly the same with admission based upon the score. In the world of American Academia as administrated by the Progressives categories of people are judged by different standards and they call this fairness.
Look at the bewildering array of social programs that have been implemented to ensure equality and fairness in the Progressive utopia. From food stamps and free cell phones to state subsidized education in criminal justice for convicted felons, these ill-conceived and often abused programs turn the safety net into a hammock that beg the question Ayn Rand was known to ask, “At whose expense?” If someone gets free food, free education; free anything the question we should ask is, at whose expense? The next question should be, do those who are paying the freight for this pleasure cruise do so voluntarily or are they being coerced? If they are being coerced into paying for someone else’s benefits what makes this any different than theft?
It’s as if the Progressives have tried to change our original national motto from” E Pluribus Unum” to “Stand and Deliver” or have they changed our present national motto “In God We Trust” to “You Can’t Fight City Hall.” Or as if the new national anthem should be, “Happy Days Are Here Again – Unless You Work For a Living.”
One of the most often quoted and misquoted statements concerning History tells us, those who do not learn from History are doomed to repeat it and today we are seeing the fruits of this truism. The two great revolutions of the eighteenth century, the American and the French, were mirror images of each other in several important ways. The American Revolution made a declaration to the entire world that the rights they sought were endowed upon all men by their creator. The French in the Declaration of the Rights of Man placed government as the source of these rights. The American Revolution sought to rid themselves of an all-powerful government with a limited government so that individuals could be free to prosper on their own. The French sought to replace an all-powerful government based upon birth with an all-powerful government based on merit believing that where the former one wanted to maintain the status quo with elites on top while the latter one would promote equality with elites on top.
The American experiment created the freest, richest, most powerful country in the History of the world. In France after the Terror, after the Triumvirate, and after the Empire the people saw that they had merely replaced one elite group with another. Then the Kings came back.
In America today our federally controlled education has led to generations of people who have never learned History or Civics. Now the progressive Pied Pipers are leading the uninformed to exchange the equality of opportunity our Founders established for the equality of outcome Europe has chased after since the French Revolution. With a public not knowing enough to know the difference these bait and switch tactics seem to be working, and after one hundred years of a living constitution the Constitution is nearly dead.
We have one more election to stem the tide as we look for a chance to reverse the flow and return America to limited government, individual freedom, and economic opportunity. If we miss this opportunity we may soon experience the equality of mediocrity as we descend into the collectivist pit of self-immolation. This pit is typified by big government programs meant to redress some perceived inequality. Redressing inequality sounds good. The problem lies in the fact that to do so you need a big enough government to enforce the desired result, and governments are made up of fallible people who all have their own prejudices and desires.
James Madison, in Federalist 51 reflected that, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Men aren’t angels. Which is why he continued, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
One program which serves as a fitting example of the impossibility of living a consistent life when trained, framed and constrained by the attempts to impose an artificial man-made, government enforced equality is Affirmative Action. Which some may argue has now reached the White House.
Why Does Affirmative Action End at the Gridiron?
Even the Colleges that are the most rapid in their interpretation and enforcement of Affirmative Action seem to forget these artificial standards when it comes to their sports teams. Have you ever wondered why that is so? Because they want the best players on the field no matter what the ratios of black, white, yellow, red, straight, gay or other.
Don’t fall for the siren song of something for nothing, for affirmative this, and equality that. Don’t let the perpetually re-elected hucksters fool you with their promise of a fair shot, a square deal, or of making someone else pay their fair share. When everything is put in one pot and it is supposed to be divided equally it always seems that those who do the dividing get the fairest share of all.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens
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