We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .
- Declaration of Independence
A distinguished senior professor, in a class on Plato's Republic,
spoke at length on the foolishness of egalitarianism. A student said,
“You've just described equality of results. Don't you think the
situation would be different in the case of equality of opportunity?”
The professor replied, “No, I don't think so.”
There
is detectable within [Elaine Showalter’s] literary criticism a strong,
unquestioned belief in the values...of traditional bourgeois humanism of
a liberal-individualist kind.... Showalter in her own criticism takes
no interest in the necessity of combating capitalism and fascism. Her
insistence on the need for political art is limited to the struggle
against sexism.... What feminists such as Showalter...fail to grasp is
that the traditional humanism they represent is in effect part of
patriarchal ideology. At its centre is the seamlessly unified
self–either individual or collective–which is commonly called “Man.”
- Toril Moi, linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9809/showalter.html
Book 8 of The Republic:
“These and other kindred characteristics are proper to democracy, which
is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and
dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” - Plato
5.
[Conservatives] feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of
long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished
from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical
systems. For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any
civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in
material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The
only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and
equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at leveling must
lead, at best, to social stagnation.
- Russell Kirk, “Ten Conservative Principles” [Emphasis added]
“We are not egalitarians, and justice doesn’t require economic leveling.”
- Rod Dreher, 1/12/12 - www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/romney-the-42-million-man/
The preceding five selections represent criticisms of the liberal principle of human equality, two from what would probably be called the academic left, two from avowed conservatives, and one from Plato himself. Is there a creeping anti-egalitarianism?*
If it should be the case that not only the right but also the left have abandoned the Founders’ stirring declaration of human equality, what happens to a closely related principle, human rights? Ta-Nehisi Coates, an editor at The Atlantic, notes the connection between the rejection of equality and one of the greatest violations of human rights, slavery:
If
black people were part of "man," and all "men" were created equal, how
could one justify slavery? Well, one could completely ignore the
discrepancy, which is exactly what a lot of Confederates did. But a more
radical proposal, one I find interesting, is the assertion that Thomas
Jefferson was quite wrong.
On
the eve of War, Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy
explicitly dismissed [the] Jeffersonian view of slavery: ...
The
prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading
statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were
that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of
nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and
politically.
It
was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general
opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order
of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. ...
Those
ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the
assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. … Our new
government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations
are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro
is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the
superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new
government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this
great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
It is not difficult to see why the Plato specialist, above, would critique equality. Plato did so, and that was very powerful with him. What would he do if he realized that the concept of human equality is the great principle upon which human rights and unalterable opposition to slavery stand?
As for the right, there seems to be, lurking beneath everything that today’s American conservatives say—the tropism toward “heroes,” the affluent bias toward an oligarchy of the obscenely rich—what Mark Lilla called “the aristocratic prejudice that ‘some are fit, and thus ought, to rule others.’” It is not difficult in this context to understand a rejection of “all men are created equal,” assuming that those who do so are able to deny the inconsistency between this and any posture of patriotic loyalty to the Founders.
The liberal Founding declared that all possess “unalienable rights.” Its three most famous words are “We the People.” When this is contrasted with phrases such as “group rights,” “oppressor groups,” or “Workers of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!” a profound difference is apparent. The liberal outlook posits no Other, no enemy, because it doesn’t need one to function. Liberalism is a philosophy of harmony, cooperation and altruism—of the phrase Washington used in his inaugural address: “The public good.”
Contrast
the ending of the Communist Manifesto, above, which implies an enemy and
issues a call to war; and contrast the “group” discourse which was
bequeathed to the modern left which, to use the left’s own terms,
“privileges” group members and “marginalizes” or “disenfranchises” those it
excludes. Inequality—discriminatory inequality—is the modus operandi of the left.
(*) This is particularly curious in the case of patriotic conservatives. What does this imply about reverence for the moral values of the Founders?
(*) This is particularly curious in the case of patriotic conservatives. What does this imply about reverence for the moral values of the Founders?
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