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Even Steven -- Fundamental Problems with Equality
American Thinker ^ | 12-5-14 | Deana Chadwell

Posted on 12/06/2014 6:11:27 PM PST by ReformationFan

The further into the frightening future we travel, the more we will need to understand what has gone wrong with our national thinking, and more importantly, how we are going to correct it. We have spent the last 6 years listening to our dear leader chastise us about equality, about paying our “fair share,” about redistributing wealth. His ideas are essentially and hopelessly false and infantile. Either we rid ourselves of such rubbish, or life in America will continue to go bad.

The idea of fairness is one of the earliest moral ideas that children grasp. If little Steven sees his sister with a cookie, he’s going to throw a fit if he doesn’t get one, too. You expect that in a little kid. Grown-ups understand the more sophisticated concept of justice – maybe Steven’s sister ate her broccoli and is being rewarded, maybe she helped wash the dishes and that is her wage. Steven’s too little to get that.

Basically there are two faces to the concept of fairness: fairness as in equality, and fairness as in justice. We can no longer afford to confuse the two.

Fairness, as in equality, deals with outcomes – outcomes that have to be forced. Let’s say Steven’s favorite aunt, Nancy, takes pity on him and forces his sister Suzy to share her cookie. That’s not just – she earned it and he didn’t, but it is equal.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: chadwell; deanachadwell; egalitarianism; equality; evensteven; justice; tyranny
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"Because equality is a lesser idea than integrity -- it is not equal to justice."
1 posted on 12/06/2014 6:11:28 PM PST by ReformationFan
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To: ReformationFan

We come into this world equal. What we do with that equality is up to us.


2 posted on 12/06/2014 6:15:12 PM PST by cripplecreek (You can't half ass conservatism.)
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To: ReformationFan

The whole “income equality” argument is a smoke screen to obfuscate what is really going on, which is politicians buying votes and political power with bribes pilfered from the public purse. It’s the traditional and universally fatal flaw that ultimately destroys all democracies. The founding fathers saw it coming more than 2 centuries ago.


3 posted on 12/06/2014 6:18:11 PM PST by Spok ("What're you going to believe-me or your own eyes?" -Marx (Groucho))
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To: cripplecreek

“We come into this world equal”

spiritually speaking anyway


4 posted on 12/06/2014 6:22:16 PM PST by MeshugeMikey ("Never, Never, Never, Give Up," Winston Churchill ><>)
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To: cripplecreek

I agree. The founders rejected a society where birth into a common status meant that regardless of ability and effort you could not advance beyond your father’s status. Intelligence and hard work should afford us the potential to advance our position. Equality of outcome was not on their minds like it is the mantra of our Marxist leaders.


5 posted on 12/06/2014 6:22:33 PM PST by JimSEA
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To: JimSEA

Its also a clear indication of the Judeo-Christian values of our founders as well.


6 posted on 12/06/2014 6:27:56 PM PST by cripplecreek (You can't half ass conservatism.)
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To: cripplecreek

We are all equal under God. Indeed.


7 posted on 12/06/2014 6:30:32 PM PST by JimSEA
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To: ReformationFan

The biggest problem with demanding equal outcomes is that it kills both freedom and responsibility.


8 posted on 12/06/2014 6:33:45 PM PST by The Ghost of FReepers Past (Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light..... Isaiah 5:20)
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To: ReformationFan

The only way for a society or government to effect actual equality of outcome is to dumb down and drag down the entire population to the l;owest common denominator.

We can already see that in action in schools, federal jobs and other areas.

The government has given up on dragging the bottom demographic upward and has begun to institute policies that have the effect of ensuring a more balanced, but lower, outcome.


9 posted on 12/06/2014 6:44:55 PM PST by Iron Munro (D.H.S. has the same headcount as the US Marine Corps with twice the budget)
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To: Iron Munro

Your last statement presumes that the government actually intended to try dragging the bottom demographic upward. I don’t believe that was ever the case. Throwing unearned money at people doesn’t motivate them to do much other than to demand more of it.


10 posted on 12/06/2014 6:52:32 PM PST by Bob (Violence in islam? That's not a bug; it's a feature.)
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To: ReformationFan
If you keep stealing from Peter to pay Paul, they will both ask "Why bother working?".
The result? Economic stagnation or worse.

11 posted on 12/06/2014 6:53:58 PM PST by BitWielder1 (Corporate Profits are better than Government Waste)
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To: ReformationFan

“It is the greatest inequality to try to make unequal things equal.”-Aristotle


12 posted on 12/06/2014 8:18:04 PM PST by Politicalkiddo ("How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!" - Benjamin Franklin)
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To: JimSEA
Decent column overall, but the following from it is utter nonsense:

We have to remember that our Founders had left a country where people were not deemed to have equal value.

13 posted on 12/07/2014 4:58:09 AM PST by Jacquerie (Article V. If not now, when?)
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To: JimSEA
Decent column overall, but the following from it is utter nonsense:

We have to remember that our Founders had left a country where people were not deemed to have equal value.

14 posted on 12/07/2014 4:58:10 AM PST by Jacquerie (Article V. If not now, when?)
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To: ReformationFan

Ask any of my kids what’s the first lesson in life and they’ll answer “Life’s not fair.”

As C. S. Lewis stated, every sin is the perversion of something good. Equality as foundation of law is needed for the exercise of liberty, but applying it as a material measure only awakens that insatiable green-eyed monster called envy.

The French Revolution was based on equality while the American Revolution was based on liberty. From concept through execution, the differences are obvious. France is a generation from collapse, and America is now treading the same dangerous path.

Those who imagine revolution cannot happen here do not understand history, nor the depravity of man.


15 posted on 12/07/2014 5:33:59 AM PST by antidisestablishment (When the passion of your convictions surpass those of your leader, it's past time for a change.)
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To: Bob
Your last statement presumes that the government actually intended to try dragging the bottom demographic upward. I don’t believe that was ever the case.

You are right but the government always has to go through the process of pretending the politically correct claptrap is true.

And I do think many liberals actually believe their own One-World, Kumbaya socio/political fantasies.

Of course, the government measures it's efforts in terms of dollars handed out and they hand out as much as necessary to make a good show of it.

They really don't care if taxpayer money is wasted as long as it keeps their victim groups mad at the other guy and safely on the democrat the plantation.


16 posted on 12/07/2014 7:40:06 AM PST by Iron Munro (D.H.S. has the same headcount as the US Marine Corps with twice the budget)
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To: cripplecreek

“The further into the frightening future we travel, the more we will need to understand what has gone wrong with our national thinking, and more importantly, how we are going to correct it. We have spent the last 6 years listening to our dear leader chastise us about equality, about paying our “fair share,” about redistributing wealth. His ideas are essentially and hopelessly false and infantile. Either we rid ourselves of such rubbish, or life in America will continue to go bad.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Man, I’m really diggin’ on that first paragraph.


17 posted on 12/07/2014 8:31:12 AM PST by RipSawyer (OPM is the religion of the sheeple.)
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To: antidisestablishment

Exactly.


18 posted on 12/07/2014 12:06:24 PM PST by ReformationFan
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To: Jacquerie
The Founders Assumed equality of opportunity, no one is born equal.

Christ said the poor will always be among us and as usual He was right.

19 posted on 12/07/2014 12:15:31 PM PST by Little Bill (EVICT Queen Jean)
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To: ReformationFan; cripplecreek; MeshugeMikey; JimSEA; The Ghost of FReepers Past; Politicalkiddo; ...

I believe the phrase in the declaration of independence that “all men are created equal” has caused problems, confusion, downright harmful policies and untold suffering.

First of all it is patently and obviously false. People are NOT equal, even at the moment of birth. Men are different than women and each individual is different from everyone else (excepting identical twins).

Second it is a totally unnecessary assertion. Jefferson would have done us a big service if he had left that phrase out and just stated “that everyone is endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That is the crucial foundation of human existence, and those are truly things that everyone is born with and where equality is implied. Different though we might be, we are all born with life, we are all born free, and what drives all of our actions from the moment of birth to death is to become happier in our own way. Those are truly self evident truths.

What is absolutely not self evident is that we’re equal - the opposite of that is what’s self evident.

The other thing that would have been nice to include in the declaration is that with liberty comes responsibility. Perhaps some freeper with more literary skills than me can shoehorn it in so that it sounds majestic :).


20 posted on 12/07/2014 11:22:57 PM PST by aquila48
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