Patriot Update - A Free Press for the Conservative Revolution

The notion of "equality" is very popular. But we must watch the weasel words of the Left, because they conflate two different types of equality.

Equality of opportunity

The equality promoted by the Founding Fathers was equality of opportunity. This means that all are under the Rule of Law: everyone, rich or poor, played by the same rules, knowable in advance. So within their abilities, everyone had the same opportunities to succeed. Even if people started off poor, they had a chance to become extremely wealthy.

For example, Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) immigrated to America from Scotland as a child, and his first job was a factory worker in a bobbin factory. Yet he founded U.S. Steel, eventually making him the second richest man in history. John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was the son of a frequently absent travelling salesman, and his first job was an assistant book-keeper, working long hours. Yet he became the founder of Standard Oil, making him the richest man in history.

Economic historian Burt Folsom wrote the book The Myth of the Robber Barons to refute the claims that such men were robbers at all. Far from it: they made steel and oil affordable to millions, and industry boomed as a result. And they gave away much of their fortune to build libraries, universities and research foundations.

And these two are just the most dramatic examples. America itself is largely the story of immigrants attracted to these shores by the promise of freedom, eager to become loyal Americans—unlike many illegals today. Even though they were often very poor, this freedom enabled them to work hard and prosper, making a better life for themselves and especially their descendants.

Equality of outcomes

But because equality of opportunity means unequal outcomes, even though society benefits overall, the Left prefer another equality: equality of outcome. But this means huge interventions to repair alleged injustices to equalize outcomes.

A good example is affirmative action, e.g. reserving places for ‘minority’ students at universities, ahead of other students with better grades who weren’t lucky enough to be born into the left-appointed victim group. One notable critic of affirmative action is Dr Thomas Sowell, e.g. in his book Affirmative Action Around the World. And although he doesn’t say so in his book, he is himself black and old enough (born 1930) to have been thrown out of segregated restaurant.

First, he argues that since racism is wrong, it is wrong no matter the colour of the victim or perpetrator. Further, why should someone be punished for what long-dead members of his racial group did, even when he played not the slightest part in the evils; and another benefit from the harm done to long-dead people of his own group, even when he wasn’t himself victimized?

Second, Sowell documents that in all regions it has been applied, it causes massive problems, e.g.:

• The main beneficiaries in the preferred group are already the best off in that group; the main victims in the unpreferred group are the worst off, often more so than those in the preferred group.
• Overall achievement drops: those in the preferred group can afford to slack off, because they are guaranteed a place; those in the unpreferred groups do likewise, since they can’t compete with guaranteed places.
• Students who gain places through affirmative action are mismatched in their high-end institutions, because they are in classes of higher achievers, and often fail—yet they could have passed in a university where the teaching was more at their pace.
• In many countries, the unfairness has provoked outright violence—even a civil war in Sri Lanka which was once a model for peaceful race relations.

Another disastrous result of equalizing outcomes is the current financial crisis. Sowell’s book The Housing Boom and Bust shows that much of the problem was due to the Left’s Community Reinvestment Act. This allowed politicians and bureaucrats to heavy lenders who were not lending enough to minorities—in their opinion. This led to a forced easing of lending standards, so many people were allowed to borrow more than they could afford.

But this was all based on dishonest use of statistics. Yes, fewer blacks obtained loans than whites—yet still, over half were granted. And when credit scores were taken into account, the rates were the same. It should be obvious: if the lenders were a tenth as greedy as they were accused of being, then they wouldn’t care about any other color than green! Even worse for the left, the same data showed that loans to Asians were approved at a higher rate than to whites. Somehow they didn’t argue that lenders discriminated against whites in favour of Asians, because that would show the absurdity of their claims.

Inequality of power

Finally, the main thing to prove that total equality is impossible is: who is to enforce it against the free choice of other people? This requires a powerful government, which means huge inequality in power. So even though in revolutionary France, everyone was called “Citizen”, in reality, Citizen Robespierre could send other citizens to the guillotine. Similarly, Comrade Stalin caused the loss of life of millions of other comrades.

It’s not just a matter of the famous epigram “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton, 1834–1902), although we see this in Washington DC all the time. It’s also that positions of great—and unchecked—power tend to attract the most power-hungry. This is the main reason that the worst atrocities in the last hundred years were committed by socialist governments, both national (Nazi) and international (Communist): For example, 77 million murders in Communist China, 62 million in the Soviet Gulag State, 21 million non-battle killings by the Nazis, 2 million murdered in the Khmer Rouge killing fields (see also Rummel, R.J., Death by Government, New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994).

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