"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 Happiness."
~The Declaration of Independence
"All men are created equal." Even in that small excerpt the modern conception of equality is refuted. All men are created equal. This does not mean they remain equal after their creation. If someone had told the Founders that their doctrine of equality really meant that the man who chooses to murder someone is "equal" to the man who chooses not to and therefore it's not fair for the latter to go to prison and the former to remain free, they would have been run out of the room. What the founders meant is that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. In other words the law applies to everyone equally. That means rich and powerful men who commit murder should go to prison just the same as the poor man. Equality under the law does not mean that everyone regardless of their choices must be guaranteed equality by the government in every possible aspect of measurement.
This original concept of equality has been destroyed in modern America and replaced with an extremist and nonsensical banality called Equalism. It is a consequence of living in a successful society that has little or no understanding of how the world normally works outside it. In most of human history, rich and powerful men can get away with things that poor men cannot. The American idea of equality is that everyone is held to the same standard. The contemporary tenet of equalism, an extremist position, goes a step farther. Equalism says that unequal outcomes reflect an unequal standard. That is, if everyone is really being held to the same standard, then everyone should be exactly the same. The only possible explanation for unequal outcomes, so they say, is that the standard is being applied unequally.
This is of course preposterous. The idea that an equal application of a law against murder requires that either everyone is a murderer or no one is defies all common sense. Thus equalism cannot be correct at any level. But the equalists in our society do not see this because they do not examine their underlying assumptions. They are blind to them. In my post on Rationalism and also in my book I make the point that Reason must proceed from premises to conclusions and those premises must be chosen. That is taken on faith. But rationalists believe that as long as they are engaging in right reason, they are aligned with the Good automatically. The result, if I am correct, is only that their real premises are obscured from themselves because they falsely believe their premise to be Reason itself. One of the premises modern people have blinded themselves to is this modern concept of Equalism.
Because of this blindness, Equalism is not a word as far as I can tell. Wikipedia redirects to "Egalitarianism," but right away there are problems:
- Egalitarianism in economics is a controversial phrase with conflicting potential meanings. It may refer either to "equality of opportunity", the view that the government ought not to discriminate against citizens or hinder opportunities for them to prosper, or the quite different notion of "equality of outcome", a state of economic affairs in which the government promotes equal prosperity for all citizens.
Clearly "Egalitarianism" is not what I mean, so I define Equalism:
- the belief that all human beings taken as individuals are mathematically equal in every quality upon birth, and differences between people only accrue from negative influences by society upon them.
What I would say is everyone has equal capacities at birth and equal value to God throughout their lives. However people can use their free will capacity to embark upon highly divergent lines of behavior. Doing so will inevitably mean that people who make different choices will end up in different situations. They will not be "equal" in the equalist sense of the term. I have been told by some of my friends that conservative "rhetoric" is long on judgment and short on redemption. Perhaps so, but perhaps it is long on judgment because redemption cannot be given to someone who hasn't first repented. You cannot redeem someone who believes he has made no error. Herein lies the spiritual danger of equalism. Equalism deflects responsibility for one's choices away from the individual and onto society at large. It is society's fault that you shot that man in cold blood. It is society's fault that you failed high school. It is society's fault that you are poor and can't support your family because you got divorced and had kids as a teenager. People who buy into this myth end up believing that many problems they have that come as a direct result of their own bad choices aren't really their fault. (Equalism fits neatly with progressive fatalism.) Even God demands repentance before salvation. He doesn't demand that you change your behavior first, but He does demand that you at least admit your sinfulness.
Today Equalism has such influence that even undeniable biological differences between people are denied such that one could say, "I am a man in a women's body" without being laughed out of the room. The Arab Spring documents one particular manifestation of Equalism. Equalists insist on gender, racial and other types of equality in sports, business, construction, the military, and every last possible form of employment or human endeavor. The equalists would have us believe that until every possible way of measuring job categories yields a perfect representation by percentage of population society is racist, sexist or whatever else. According to Equalism, the only possible explanation for a gender disparity of men in the construction industry and women in beauty salons is society's prejudice. When anyone suggests that maybe, just maybe, men prefer construction jobs and women prefer hairstyling, that person is labeled a sexist. When anyone suggests that the high crime rate of African Americans is not the result of racism in the criminal justice system, that person is automatically a racist. When, for instance, Mitt Romney suggests that Israel's per capita GDP exceeds that of the surrounding countries because of the superiority of their culture, he is vilified by the equalists. These people are not responding to reality. They are responding to their own prior convictions about the human race, convictions they have completely blinded themselves to. In their minds, their conclusion is the only possible, rational conclusion, and anyone who disagrees with them is automatically evil, like some cackling Bond villian. Truth has nothing to do with it.
Now that's whack.
~The Declaration of Independence
"All men are created equal." Even in that small excerpt the modern conception of equality is refuted. All men are created equal. This does not mean they remain equal after their creation. If someone had told the Founders that their doctrine of equality really meant that the man who chooses to murder someone is "equal" to the man who chooses not to and therefore it's not fair for the latter to go to prison and the former to remain free, they would have been run out of the room. What the founders meant is that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. In other words the law applies to everyone equally. That means rich and powerful men who commit murder should go to prison just the same as the poor man. Equality under the law does not mean that everyone regardless of their choices must be guaranteed equality by the government in every possible aspect of measurement.
This original concept of equality has been destroyed in modern America and replaced with an extremist and nonsensical banality called Equalism. It is a consequence of living in a successful society that has little or no understanding of how the world normally works outside it. In most of human history, rich and powerful men can get away with things that poor men cannot. The American idea of equality is that everyone is held to the same standard. The contemporary tenet of equalism, an extremist position, goes a step farther. Equalism says that unequal outcomes reflect an unequal standard. That is, if everyone is really being held to the same standard, then everyone should be exactly the same. The only possible explanation for unequal outcomes, so they say, is that the standard is being applied unequally.
This is of course preposterous. The idea that an equal application of a law against murder requires that either everyone is a murderer or no one is defies all common sense. Thus equalism cannot be correct at any level. But the equalists in our society do not see this because they do not examine their underlying assumptions. They are blind to them. In my post on Rationalism and also in my book I make the point that Reason must proceed from premises to conclusions and those premises must be chosen. That is taken on faith. But rationalists believe that as long as they are engaging in right reason, they are aligned with the Good automatically. The result, if I am correct, is only that their real premises are obscured from themselves because they falsely believe their premise to be Reason itself. One of the premises modern people have blinded themselves to is this modern concept of Equalism.
Because of this blindness, Equalism is not a word as far as I can tell. Wikipedia redirects to "Egalitarianism," but right away there are problems:
- Egalitarianism in economics is a controversial phrase with conflicting potential meanings. It may refer either to "equality of opportunity", the view that the government ought not to discriminate against citizens or hinder opportunities for them to prosper, or the quite different notion of "equality of outcome", a state of economic affairs in which the government promotes equal prosperity for all citizens.
Clearly "Egalitarianism" is not what I mean, so I define Equalism:
- the belief that all human beings taken as individuals are mathematically equal in every quality upon birth, and differences between people only accrue from negative influences by society upon them.
What I would say is everyone has equal capacities at birth and equal value to God throughout their lives. However people can use their free will capacity to embark upon highly divergent lines of behavior. Doing so will inevitably mean that people who make different choices will end up in different situations. They will not be "equal" in the equalist sense of the term. I have been told by some of my friends that conservative "rhetoric" is long on judgment and short on redemption. Perhaps so, but perhaps it is long on judgment because redemption cannot be given to someone who hasn't first repented. You cannot redeem someone who believes he has made no error. Herein lies the spiritual danger of equalism. Equalism deflects responsibility for one's choices away from the individual and onto society at large. It is society's fault that you shot that man in cold blood. It is society's fault that you failed high school. It is society's fault that you are poor and can't support your family because you got divorced and had kids as a teenager. People who buy into this myth end up believing that many problems they have that come as a direct result of their own bad choices aren't really their fault. (Equalism fits neatly with progressive fatalism.) Even God demands repentance before salvation. He doesn't demand that you change your behavior first, but He does demand that you at least admit your sinfulness.
Today Equalism has such influence that even undeniable biological differences between people are denied such that one could say, "I am a man in a women's body" without being laughed out of the room. The Arab Spring documents one particular manifestation of Equalism. Equalists insist on gender, racial and other types of equality in sports, business, construction, the military, and every last possible form of employment or human endeavor. The equalists would have us believe that until every possible way of measuring job categories yields a perfect representation by percentage of population society is racist, sexist or whatever else. According to Equalism, the only possible explanation for a gender disparity of men in the construction industry and women in beauty salons is society's prejudice. When anyone suggests that maybe, just maybe, men prefer construction jobs and women prefer hairstyling, that person is labeled a sexist. When anyone suggests that the high crime rate of African Americans is not the result of racism in the criminal justice system, that person is automatically a racist. When, for instance, Mitt Romney suggests that Israel's per capita GDP exceeds that of the surrounding countries because of the superiority of their culture, he is vilified by the equalists. These people are not responding to reality. They are responding to their own prior convictions about the human race, convictions they have completely blinded themselves to. In their minds, their conclusion is the only possible, rational conclusion, and anyone who disagrees with them is automatically evil, like some cackling Bond villian. Truth has nothing to do with it.
Now that's whack.
