Seeking equality is a lot like seeking perfection — just without the perfection. In a speech recently, Al Sharpton emphasized that the left’s white whale, equality, still eludes us. Martin Luther King’s dream “was not to put one black family in the White House,” said he; “The dream was to make everything equal in everybody’s house.” Ah, the profundity. Now, it could be pointed out that your house will likely never measure up to Tawana Al’s, even if you do manage to mainline government hand-outs. Not everyone is a reverend without a congregation who possesses a collection plate the size of Louis Farrakhan’s “Mother Ship” flying saucer. As to this, it could also be pointed out that if “Big collection, No Parishioners” didn’t find new mountains of white sheets to climb, he’d be out of a “job” — in a quote-unquote manner of speaking.

Yet, for every Tawana Al, Jena Jesse and X-Files Farrakhan, there are millions of moderns who sincerely believe that equality is the greatest good, even if they can’t make millions peddling it. It’s one of those assumptions people just don’t question.

Regardless, I am firm in my conviction that the term “equality” should be reserved for mathematics. Don’t I believe in equality, you ask? Well, my first answer is “insufficient data.” What do you mean by “equality”? Is it that everyone should have equal rights? Is it that everyone should have equal opportunities? Is it that we should strive for equal outcomes? All of these propositions, and others, have been offered as definitions of equality.

The truth is that, like “education,” “progress” and “liberty,” “equality” has become a shape-shifting buzzword. Yet one thing is for certain: As the reproval of Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, James Watson and Larry Summers demonstrated, today’s equality dogma states that we must view all groups as identically gifted in every worldly sense. And it is this belief that justifies many civilization-rending social schemes, from efforts to eliminate the male-female wage gap to racial quotas to Title IX dictates.

Of course, the thinking isn’t hard to understand. If groups were identically gifted in terms of worldly abilities, performance differences could be caused by only one factor, discrimination — either the direct variety or the kind leading to unequal opportunity. This justifies social engineering on steroids to eliminate this discrimination that just must exist. Embracing lies has consequences.  

When warning of these dangers, Russian defector Yuri Bezmenov once pointed out that you will find calls for equality in no great, time-tested work, be it the Bible or anything else. But not only is the principle ahistorical, it’s also un-American. Sure, the Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal . . .,” but they qualified it with “. . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . .” Since the founders descended from a class-oriented civilization (Europe) in which people often couldn’t break the shackles of caste and station regardless of their talents, they took pains to emphasize that everyone, from prince to pauper, was entitled to certain rights. They well knew, however, that individuals and groups had characteristic strengths and weaknesses. And they would have recoiled at the proposition that the power of the state should be used to achieve equal outcomes.

Since fallacious theories don’t work — and because the left operates based on that ever-changing master called emotion — Equality Dogma is courted by only unfaithful suitors. For example, it is contradicted by another object of the left’s lust, Diversity Doctrine. After all, we ever hear that “Our strength lies in our diversity,” but this can only be true if different groups bring things to the table others don’t, if they possess characteristic strengths others lack. The left has a way of getting around this contradiction, however: They simply say whatever feels right at the moment.

Yet there is a deeper factor here. Question: On what basis do you measure people’s worth? Well, if you accept the Judeo-Christian conception of God, you believe that every person is equally valuable — whether it’s Terry Shiavo lying helpless in a hospital bed or an undeveloped baby in the womb — because he is made in His image. You understand that, since holiness (doing God’s will) is the true measure of success, the celebrity, billionaire or genius may be found more wanting than a less serendipitous Forrest Gump.

But what if you perceive nothing beyond this fold that could supersede what lies within it? The things of this world then become the most important things in this world to you. This helps explain not only the atheistic left’s preoccupation with worldly abilities, worldly success and equalizing worldly outcomes, but also their fanatical insistence that no one even allude to worldly differences among groups. You see, in order for them to value all groups equally, they must maintain the illusion that their only measure of worth, the worldly, finds all groups equal. And since leftists — at least at this moment — have convinced themselves that a good person views everyone as equal, they fear and revile anything threatening that illusion.

And the left has always been concerned about stamping out inequality. Many years ago its minions not only perceived differences among groups, they claimed the differences were so darn intractable that the only way to deal with the “inferior” was to eliminate them from society. Thus did they give us the science of eugenics.

In the early 1900s, eugenics was all the rage among the left. It was “science” bellowed with a capital S, a “thinking man’s” pursuit. It was the stuff of the enlightened, only opposed by religious zealots stuck in the Middle Ages. And who were these bold authors of the brave new world? John Ray at FrontPageMag.com mentions a handful, citing the following passage: "A significant number of Progressives -- including David Starr Jordan, Robert Latham Owen, William Allen Wilson, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Robert Latou Dickinson, Katherine Bement Davis, and Virginia Gildersleeve--were deeply involved with the eugenics movement."

Then there were the more prominent figures, such as Bertrand Russell; George Bernard Shaw; and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who was a member of both the Eugenics Society in Britain and the American Eugenics Society.

Of course, their thinking made sense as far as its shallow analysis went. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, if we were not created equal, we were certainly evolved unequal. So the left figured this: We evolved, and unequal evolution is the cause of our woes. This problem is exacerbated because modern science and convenience enable the weak to reproduce, thereby counteracting the survival-of-the-fittest factor. Thus, to purge inequality from the gene pool, evolution must be helped along — by those enlightened enough to recognize life unworthy of life.

So leftists have always cared about equality. And maybe, someday, they’ll start caring about people, too.


Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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DDW

May 07, 2010

173.57.11.190

Votes: +5

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Soon we will indeed be equal . . .

. . . Everyone will have nothing (except for our "leaders", of course).

Captain James Carlyle Green

May 08, 2010

75.169.228.249

Votes: +3

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Equality Must be Earned

For those who espouse the idea that everyone should be "equal," I point out that everyone can be equal--- if they work hard enough. What they mean by equal is to be wealthy, educated, intelligent, informed. And people who have arrived at that level of "equality" generally did so by sheer perseverance, hard work, and determination.

The availability of information through free sources today (libraries, Internet...) makes it possible for the poorest of people to gain a good education, even if on their own. But they must do it.

The definition of equality by people like Al Sharpton is for folks to have it given to them like some unearned welfare entitlement program. It doesn't work that way and never will.

Like Clinton's failed "Everyone has a right to own a home" program (whether they can afford it or not), which largely caused the economic meltdown we are experiencing presently, plans to make everyone equal through legislative action or creative socio-engineering don't work.

The only way certain groups will ever achieve the level of equality they seek, is if they buckle in as individuals and prove to the world they deserve it. Equality is earned not bequeathed. That's a hard fact of life.

Captain James Carlyle Green

DDW

May 09, 2010

173.57.11.190

Votes: +4

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To Captain James Carlyle Green

Thank you for what you posted, Sir. That is exactly what every single adult/elder taught me and all my brothers when we were growing up under my parent's roof. It's absolutely true and has served us all well throughout our lives. It used to make me angry, as a boy, when I'd ask for something and Dad's and Mom's reply was ALWAYS: "Did you earn it"? After I got out on my own, it made perfect sense. :)

CabotAR

May 09, 2010

68.235.159.28

Votes: +3

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Equality in America

The government is not suppose to make all of us equal.......it's only purpose is to provide us with "equal opportunity". The liberals are now changing this simple concept.

rprew

May 10, 2010

72.201.107.33

Votes: +3

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In a horse race ...

all the horses have equal opportunity at the starting gate. They are starting at the same time, on the same track, in the same direction, for the same distance, with the same track conditions, and the same weather. Only one of them will win. And one of them will come in dead last.

If a particular horse consistently comes in last, it may be that horse would be better off as a saddle horse on a dude ranch. There is nothing unfair about it.

RichardR369

May 13, 2010

68.12.145.1

Votes: +0

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Rights Proven Mathematically

I’m going back to school and started to apply math to real life scenarios. A “right = right”. When you add a variable ‘x’ to a right, it’s not longer a right “right(x) ≉ right”. When x equals 0 that means the right is gone because anything times 0 is still 0. However whenever x > 0, it’s still not a right but has become a privilege because you must do whatever x demands.

Joanna Morse

May 14, 2010

216.245.231.111

Votes: +0

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Bigotry by any other name smells the same

Mr. Duke can wrap it up in any package he might wish to. Cover it all with what seems to be impressive logic, and encase it in silver tongued words but regardless of how you paint it, there is inequality and it is not just based on skin color. It is always a bit troubling to me when people start telling others we cannot read the words in the Bible or Constitution ourselves but they can. Then go on to tell us what they mean as if they have some unique insight no one else has in regard to what is there. It is rather like being peed on by someone then being told it is just the morning dew we are feeling. While I am not going to say Al Sharpton or any number of those who are supposed to be working for "equality" are really doing that job, as many I feel do so in order to profit themselves, it does not mean the goal of equality does not exist or that it has been achieved. We still have a long way to go and frankly the views of Mr.Duke are not of the type that help move us to that end. Moving the goal posts around to make it seem we have reached the end is not the same as actually reaching it, even if it is painted up pretty.

AlwaysAmerican

May 14, 2010

74.88.47.253

Votes: +0

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...

A wise person once told me that under Communism, we are all equally poor. How's that equality for you?

How's that false Hope & Totalitarian Change workin' for ya? !!!

WAKE UP AMERICA...........This is truly thee 11th hour!

Restore the Republic! Stand firm on the original intent of our Founding Fathers!

Stand up and defend truth or you will fall and be dragged down otherwise!

God Bless The United States of America, One Nation Under God!!!

Discarded

June 01, 2010

24.98.56.56

Votes: +0

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...

Theres only ONE way to handle this problem we're in.

Time to purge the Land.

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