LOCAL ANGLES: BELIEVING THE GREAT LIE; EQUALITY IN AMERICA

The most overused and troublesome phrase in our patriotic lexicon is the notion "that all men are created equal." The phrase, which is in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, leaves one with a sort of warm glow of goodness. But does it square with observed truth?

All men most certainly are created unequal in terms of intelligence, abilities, virtue and usefulness. Surely our founding fathers realized this. How could they avow a "self-evident" truth that is so obviously a lie.

As you read further in the Declaration, you begin to see the qualifiers: "(men) are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ..."

In other words, the founders' claim of equality was stated in the context of a Creator who inheres rights equally in all, and who values each individual equally.

I recall reading years ago an excellent book written prior to the Revolutionary War. I believe the author's name is Samuel Rutherford. The book is titled "Lex Rex," which means the Law is King -- a radical idea in Western Europe at the time, where "the divine right of kings" meant that the King was Law.

Rutherford's belief, and it's one our founding fathers shared, was that Natural Law governs individual men equally, and therefore all mankind. Government derives its powers only with the consent of the governed, who are under the "Law of Nature."

To Rutherford, there certainly were men who were better blacksmiths than others, or better orators, or better kings. The point is, no ruler (or group of rulers) is unequal -- on an inherently higher plain of authority or truth -- than his subjects. This is the self-evident equality of which our nation's fathers spoke.

But in America today, the concept of equality has been turned upside down. Today, government rules supreme, unfettered and unaccountable. Meanwhile, the governed promulgate a false hope of absolute equality, leading to the politics of envy, at the expense of the proper definition, which ought to curb government's invasiveness.

Society seeks equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities. Rather than reward achievement, talent, beauty and success, we tax it and regulate it out of existence. Rather than condemn slothfulness and irresponsibility, we subsidize it. We proclaim the lie that a successful businessman is no more to be admired than an unwed mother of six. After all, we're all equal.

We lie by saying a conscientious student who achieves high marks is no better than the lazy student with poor grades, who needs only self-esteem to realize his true nature as an equal to the good student. When that doesn't work, and the poor student continues to fail, albeit with a better self-image, our solution is to "dumb-down" the school. Standards are lowered, cheating the best students while assuaging the failures.

It's precisely backwards. We ought to challenge the good student to attain even greater heights while censuring the poor student. On a different level, we ought to foster a free market that enables the entrepreneur and businessman to prosper, while denouncing the idle breeder of bastards.

These are the questions that are at the core of the culture war -- the battle for the soul of our nation: What do we, as a society, esteem? What do we regard as beautiful and repulsive, good and evil, right and wrong? But we have so bastardized our own heritage that our equality prevents us from making such judgments about others. After all, who are we to judge? the argument goes.

We are inheritors of the greatest nation in the world, and we had better judge or risk losing all for which our forefathers have fought, lived and died.

Ours is a nation founded on the notion that all men are created equally able to choose their path in life. Our liberty and equality ensures the opportunity to succeed greatly or fail miserably. But when success is punished through the dumbing down of schools and increasingly oppressive tax rates for high achievers -- when we scoff at virtue -- we guarantee fewer geniuses, less affluence and abounding sin.

Likewise, by subsidizing failure through the ever-expanding "safety net" of welfare, and by fostering the lie that equal outcomes are a good thing, we guarantee even greater poverty, illegitimacy and incompetence.

In his book "Enemies of Society," Paul Johnson wrote: "In our times, liberty's chief conflict has been with equality. But absolute equality is not a good at all; it is a chimera..."

And yet we cling to this false and vain hope, while society crumbles around us.

~Jay Eastlick is night editor for the Southeast Missourian.