It might have started with our early American founding fathers or perhaps with the leaders of the French Revolution. It might have been an overreaction to aristocracy in France and/or England. It might have been inspired by a notion of paradise. But an idea emerged and was written into the DNA of both countries: all men were created equal - equality, fraternity and liberty.
But as pointed out in a previous column, “Are We All Created Equal?” we are not created equal. The founding fathers knew that and so did the French revolutionaries. Items created on an assembly line or made using the same mold might be created equal, but living creatures, except possibly for identical twins and clones, are not. Dogs are not created equal, nor are elephants and neither are humans. The founding fathers had slaves who were not considered equal or treated that way. Women were not considered equal and were not entitled to vote. Only white, Christian, male, American landowners were considered of somewhat equal standing.
Maybe they meant to say that all humans are equally human and therefore equally due certain human rights.
Communism was based on the idea that we are all created equal and that we should always remain that way and would were it not for capitalists who rig the game. No one should have more money or status than anyone else, they believed. Everyone should share in the group’s bounty, equally. Communism didn’t work out well with lowered productivity and creativity and increased corruption with human nature revolting against the idea that we are all equal.
Our democratic and capitalist system accommodates our individual differences and provides different amounts of rewards for various talents and accomplishments. A baseball star player does not get equal pay with a rookie. The brain surgeon gets more money and prestige than a butcher or car salesman.
But the idea of equality lives on today. We talk of marriage equality, income inequality, arrest equality, gender pay equality and cultural equality, also known as cultural relativity. We are insisting that there must be equality in these realms.
Gender pay inequality claims are based on surveys that look at how much people of each gender are paid for their services. The results were that in the past women received only 75% as much pay as did men. The reason was that women were more likely to work in lower paying jobs or did not have as much seniority in similar positions they held with men. Women who begin careers today make about 93% as much as men do because more of them have higher paying jobs.
Same-sex relationships have always been considered to be very different from those opposite-sex ones in that they did not result in accidental or intentional pregnancy and therefore did not need to be monogamous. But people in same-sex relationships suffered from several forms of unfair discrimination and wanted to be recognized as legitimate, as indeed they are. They wanted the considerations and benefits married couples enjoyed. They argued their case using the notion of equality that so appeals to us. “All love is equal.”
And even though in a capitalist system, some will earn more than others, the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown much larger. The people on top are earning more in salaries and in investment returns than ever before while the majority of Americans see little improvement in their own economic conditions. People began describing this as income inequality as though the goal were to have everyone receive equal pay. This is not the goal. The goal must be to reduce the degree of income disparity: the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor and those in the middle feel stuck in place.
A federal Justice Department review was made of police activity in Ferguson, Missouri after a grand jury found a police officer not guilty for the death of a black teen who was attacking and threatening the life of the officer. Finding that the grand jury was correct in its ruling, the Justice Department looked for problems with the local police department. They found that over a five year period as many as five emails that seemed racist were written by members of the department. While this finding was not very significant considering the number of officers and the five year period, the Attorney General then found that while the city’s black population was only 67%, the arrest rate of black residents was 80+%. The thought was that this might prove bias. The idea being that every group should be arrested equal to its proportion of the population.
A look at crime statistics shows that this is nowhere near to the case. Certain minority communities have a disproportionate share of victims and causes of violent crime in America. While representing only 13% of our population, blacks suffer 55% of all gun related homicides (53% of all violent homicides) or about 6,000 deaths a year, and blacks are 93% of their assailants and are responsible for more than 52% of all violent homicides in America.
But the equality claim that has suffered most by the real world, is cultural relativity, a mainstay of members of the far left and frequent world travelers. These people will immediately try to counter any criticism of another country or culture with an example in our culture. Say that Muslim countries that require women to be subjugated by having their appearance covered or having their freedom limited, and these cultural relativists will desperately come up with equal examples of it here. Some will point to the fact that some women here feel they must wear high heels and make-up or that they earn only 93% as much as their male counterparts as examples of our cultural equality with those in the Middle East. Mention the severe terrorism in that same part of the world with groups like Boko Haram, ISIS, Al Qaida, Al Shabaad, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Taliban and our relativity friends will remind us of the Crusades, fought barely a thousand years ago and the KKK whose members burned crosses and lynched innocent blacks.
But by now, even these dedicated reality deniers realize the folly in their efforts. All cultures are not created equal and do not ever get to be equal. People in these less-than-equal cultures suffer from poverty, ignorance, corruption and violence. Many are ruled by cruel tyrants as we have seen in the Middle East and Africa and to a lesser degree in Latin America.
So, rather than continue to pretend that everyone is somehow equal or that there should be income or crime or gender or cultural equality, we could be more helpful by acknowledging significant differences and finding ways of reducing the disparity and its damaging effects in our nation as well as elsewhere in the world.
But as pointed out in a previous column, “Are We All Created Equal?” we are not created equal. The founding fathers knew that and so did the French revolutionaries. Items created on an assembly line or made using the same mold might be created equal, but living creatures, except possibly for identical twins and clones, are not. Dogs are not created equal, nor are elephants and neither are humans. The founding fathers had slaves who were not considered equal or treated that way. Women were not considered equal and were not entitled to vote. Only white, Christian, male, American landowners were considered of somewhat equal standing.
Maybe they meant to say that all humans are equally human and therefore equally due certain human rights.
Communism was based on the idea that we are all created equal and that we should always remain that way and would were it not for capitalists who rig the game. No one should have more money or status than anyone else, they believed. Everyone should share in the group’s bounty, equally. Communism didn’t work out well with lowered productivity and creativity and increased corruption with human nature revolting against the idea that we are all equal.
Our democratic and capitalist system accommodates our individual differences and provides different amounts of rewards for various talents and accomplishments. A baseball star player does not get equal pay with a rookie. The brain surgeon gets more money and prestige than a butcher or car salesman.
But the idea of equality lives on today. We talk of marriage equality, income inequality, arrest equality, gender pay equality and cultural equality, also known as cultural relativity. We are insisting that there must be equality in these realms.
Gender pay inequality claims are based on surveys that look at how much people of each gender are paid for their services. The results were that in the past women received only 75% as much pay as did men. The reason was that women were more likely to work in lower paying jobs or did not have as much seniority in similar positions they held with men. Women who begin careers today make about 93% as much as men do because more of them have higher paying jobs.
Same-sex relationships have always been considered to be very different from those opposite-sex ones in that they did not result in accidental or intentional pregnancy and therefore did not need to be monogamous. But people in same-sex relationships suffered from several forms of unfair discrimination and wanted to be recognized as legitimate, as indeed they are. They wanted the considerations and benefits married couples enjoyed. They argued their case using the notion of equality that so appeals to us. “All love is equal.”
And even though in a capitalist system, some will earn more than others, the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown much larger. The people on top are earning more in salaries and in investment returns than ever before while the majority of Americans see little improvement in their own economic conditions. People began describing this as income inequality as though the goal were to have everyone receive equal pay. This is not the goal. The goal must be to reduce the degree of income disparity: the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor and those in the middle feel stuck in place.
A federal Justice Department review was made of police activity in Ferguson, Missouri after a grand jury found a police officer not guilty for the death of a black teen who was attacking and threatening the life of the officer. Finding that the grand jury was correct in its ruling, the Justice Department looked for problems with the local police department. They found that over a five year period as many as five emails that seemed racist were written by members of the department. While this finding was not very significant considering the number of officers and the five year period, the Attorney General then found that while the city’s black population was only 67%, the arrest rate of black residents was 80+%. The thought was that this might prove bias. The idea being that every group should be arrested equal to its proportion of the population.
A look at crime statistics shows that this is nowhere near to the case. Certain minority communities have a disproportionate share of victims and causes of violent crime in America. While representing only 13% of our population, blacks suffer 55% of all gun related homicides (53% of all violent homicides) or about 6,000 deaths a year, and blacks are 93% of their assailants and are responsible for more than 52% of all violent homicides in America.
But the equality claim that has suffered most by the real world, is cultural relativity, a mainstay of members of the far left and frequent world travelers. These people will immediately try to counter any criticism of another country or culture with an example in our culture. Say that Muslim countries that require women to be subjugated by having their appearance covered or having their freedom limited, and these cultural relativists will desperately come up with equal examples of it here. Some will point to the fact that some women here feel they must wear high heels and make-up or that they earn only 93% as much as their male counterparts as examples of our cultural equality with those in the Middle East. Mention the severe terrorism in that same part of the world with groups like Boko Haram, ISIS, Al Qaida, Al Shabaad, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Taliban and our relativity friends will remind us of the Crusades, fought barely a thousand years ago and the KKK whose members burned crosses and lynched innocent blacks.
But by now, even these dedicated reality deniers realize the folly in their efforts. All cultures are not created equal and do not ever get to be equal. People in these less-than-equal cultures suffer from poverty, ignorance, corruption and violence. Many are ruled by cruel tyrants as we have seen in the Middle East and Africa and to a lesser degree in Latin America.
So, rather than continue to pretend that everyone is somehow equal or that there should be income or crime or gender or cultural equality, we could be more helpful by acknowledging significant differences and finding ways of reducing the disparity and its damaging effects in our nation as well as elsewhere in the world.
