The Trouble with Equality

We are in this world almost daily deluged with calls for equality. It all sounds so good, and everyone seems to want it. But there's only one problem with it.

We are not, any of us, really equal.

This is not to say that we are not political equals. Yet even that phrase leaves a bit of uncertainty: we are only equal because my vote should count as much as yours. That doesn't strike us as equality. It strikes us as justice.

In the same manner, as we have employed this tactic when talking about freedom, education, peace, and so forth, so too do we find that we must apply it to any calls for equality. We need to ask what the supporters of equality really mean. Because any absolute and final equality of circumstances must actually be something which applies only in very, very few cases. Take equal pay for equal work, for example. Notice that we are asking a question whose answer only applies to very strict and definite circumstances. A woman cancer doctor, 50 years old, with 20 years of practice, who graduated from the same schools with the same grades as a complimentary male cancer specialist in the same place of work, and with the same proficiency of work, should get the same pay. No rational mind would argue otherwise. But the case is so limited that only one answer is truly right anyway.

As to the other facet of the argument, well, calls for equality must ring hollow because, again, we are not equal. A brain surgeon isn't equal to a plumber, no matter how much more we want the latter when the faucet breaks or the basement floods, and no matter which is male or female. As a matter of decency, we should not automatically look well on the surgeon nor ill on the plumber. But yet again, that's a point about justice, not equality.

We could refine the case further, but we trust the point is made. When we are demanding equality we are often (if not in fact always) demanding justice. We are asking that we be treated rightly and properly in light of the circumstances which surround us. We are not asking for equality. We are asking for justice.

So, and we are sure many people may have grown tired of us asking yet we must, when you demand equality, do you really want that? If so, how? Why? For we need to remember that the only sure way to make folks equal is downward, to the where no one is above the lowest common denominator.

That the average person means equality in the sense of true justice we don't doubt. Still, it is when we use terms wrongly that we have the greatest troubles. It is then when the radical fringe of any given group may take the day. Yet when we clarify our thoughts, when we strive to end misunderstanding by calling things what they are, then, indeed, justice wins out. Isn't that what we really want?

Snyder's Education Cuts Strike a Chord

Protesters, around one hundred in number, showed up at Woodward and Nine Mile to call attention to cuts to public education passed by the Michigan House Thursday. They claim to have the best interests of children in mind, yet some of what was said there gives us cause to question their real intent.

One of the protesters held a sign which read, 'Public education and unions made our country strong'. 'Closing schools, that's not healthy. Get the money from the wealthy," a man called out over a bullhorn. As a bit of the cherry on top to this clearly self aggrandizing mix, the event was organized by a local chapter of Jobs with Justice. A quick study of that group's website shows it to be something of a modern day socialist front.

That tells us all we need to know about the nature of the protest. They aren't for the schools, they're for the workers. There's nothing wrong with that so far as it goes. But it is galling that they operate under the pretense of helping the schools when they are really for the teachers and the unions.

Nothing wrong with that, either, only call it what it is. Snyder doesn't support education because he seeks to cut the education budget. Yet how is it that the people who most directly benefit from public education, namely the school employees, are not seen as selfish for wanting to keep funding at a level high enough to keep their wages where they want them to be?

Especially as you consider that education is primarily a parental and not a societal issue, notwithstanding American tradition on the matter, and the protest can be seen for what it really is: people living at the public trough demanding the public continue to pay their wages on their terms, and democracy be damned. Yet they are not called selfish.

It is a matter which speaks for itself. And it indeed speaks volumes.