Written by David Wotitzky
“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”
~Thomas Jefferson
The fight for equality has been highlighted over the course of our history. The idea of equality is important, both in essence and in instituting a freedom of opportunity. That idea of equality, the one established in the Constitution of the United States, stated that we the people were endowed with the right to an equal opportunity for success. This is no longer what we mean when we talk about equality. Our way of viewing equality today is fundamentally flawed, and is in direct conflict with individual rights; the base on which the idea of liberty was built. It is no longer good enough that our Constitution delineates the power of choice, thus the equal opportunity of success amongst its constituents. Today, the idea of equality stems from a belief that people are entitled to certain things based on the simple fact that they exist. F.A. Hayek wrote about the juxtaposition of liberty and equality:
“Not only has liberty nothing to do with any other sort of equality (equality of opportunity), but it is even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others, much of the case for it would vanish.”
What Hayek is saying, is that freedom to choose can have both a negative and a positive outcome; the equality of opportunity allows anyone to succeed or fail based on his or her own merits and their individual will to rise above the fray. It’s because of this that the free market has been a historically successful enterprise for national and global commerce. Liberty does not stand for the subsidization of incompetence, mounted on the premise that all men should be MADE equal through forceful overtures. Politicians make this mistake everyday. They believe that all men are created equal, but they do so in a way that promotes the very thing they claim to fight, inequality. Politicians look to make Americans equal through the theft and coercion of those who’s successes can fund such economic, and philosophical lunacy. The theft, in case you were wondering, is of an individuals private property. The private property being the wealth generated by individuals residing in a tax bracket designated by their ability to accumulate wealth. On a side note, taxation by income bracket is in itself a practice of inequality; an act of monetary bigotry, and theft on false and malicious pretenses. Liberty is only possible if a system that is set up to protect the rights of the individual, acts as a protector and not an enforcer. This is the problem we face today. Laws continue to be passed under the false pretense that the establishment of such policies will lead to equality amongst the people. Forced equality is a contradiction in terms. By forcing everyone into a fantasy world idea of equality, you eliminate the freedom of opportunity, replacing it with a dictatorial enforcer who enslaves one group to subsidize another, eroding their freedoms to establish some fantasy world for what the complacent masses that depend on the government as if it were a life support system who’s assistance they would die without. Once again we can look to nobel prize winner F.A. Hayek, who wrote,
“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently.”
This is important, because if you accept the premise that all people are different by nature, then anything you do to benefit one individual (or group) will directly hinder another individual that stands opposed, or shares different ideals than the one benefiting from the assistance. Understanding this idea in the context of government aide is also very important. The idea of equality we have today, can only be made possible through taxation. Taxes are necessary because the government can only afford to fund such nonsensical subsidization by stealing vast amounts of wealth from those who generate the majority of it. Now, back to the point I was making on the inequality of equality. Now, if we accept the premise that all people are different, i.e. individuals, then we must also accept the premise that by seeking to assist one person (through unfair practice), we will directly hinder another. I will use an example to highlight this point.
A group of environmentalists, say the Audobon Society, want a law passed that prohibits all forms of logging in the United States of America. The environmentalists believe that it is their right to enjoy the forests that are logged yearly to supply resources for housing, furniture and the many other basic uses made possible by the practice of logging. If the law is passed, who does this affect? Well the loggers are out of a job, and everyone who works for the logging company. The need for contractors diminishes, so their out of a job too. Paper companies go out of business; the remaining supply sold at exorbitant prices because the supply is no longer fiat. People resort to using more plastic to make up for the absence of wood based products, which forces the allocation of oil (one of the main ingredients for plastic) from energy based consumption (gasoline) to household necessities that were once dominated by manufactures producing wood based products. This could force several outcomes. First, companies that manufacture plastic household appliances, and even the structure of the houses that were once dependent on different variants of wood, would be in high demand. This would, thanks to an artificial need for plastic, drive the price of gasoline up, because the energy companies would have to pay more for a product that is being demanded for public consumption in an area outside the field of oil based energies. This would directly affect a vast majority of the population, because transportation would become a great deal more expensive, as gasoline reserves become scarce at an artificially accelerated rate. Because of government interference, the right of the people to pursue a profitable enterprise in which to work has been compromised. By satisfying the environmentalists, who claimed they had a right to the enjoy the scenic route on the way home from work, a systemic, yet artificial affect, left people jobless, and consumers bankrupted with fewer American’s able to afford transportation. This is just one example of many possible scenarios made possible by special interest groups fighting for their “rights” through government assistance. The only equality, is the equality of opportunity.
The problem with forced equality can be best viewed in the realm of economics. The Second Bill of Rights, suggested that all people had a right to a job, a fair wage, a house, an education, health care, protection in old age, etc. Liberals, in the spirit of FDR, claimed that the right to the aforementioned list, were endowed rights that every American was automatically entitled too. Deciples of such nonsense believe that regardless of economic success, we should all, as Americans, be afforded these luxuries; that those who fail should be rewarded with the prize of those that succeed. Their property. And that is where the rights of the individual are infringed upon, where the idea of freedom becomes a mockery of the liberty established in the spirit of freedom, by the blood of men who fought for that freedom. Today we fight for our freedom, though the amount of bloodshed does not dictate victory. We fight for freedom against the tyranny of the mind, and the appropriation of our individual liberty, by dictators who give the saying “the pen is mightier than the sword,” teeth with which to tear our liberty from us.
Today we have laws that force employment of less qualified applicants, where the color of skin supersedes skill and professional ability. Where theft is measured in tax brackets, where the most successful are robbed at gunpoint by the very government that was established to protect their property; their successes chained to the failures of those who chose the life of a rotter, satisfied seeking profits with their hands out, empty with incompetence. These were the failures who lacked the will to succeed, who’s likeness reflects their carrion nature; vultures and parasites feeding off the carcass of the successful.
