Photo credit: Serguey
Just a little more about the American system, from a certified non-expert.
There are many expressions that we hear all our lives, beginning in our childhood (this is very noticeable in the church), expressions which we tend to skate over without considering their specific meanings.
“Freedom” and “equality” are two of those. I suspect a lot of Americans think they mean the same thing. And they most emphatically do not.
Here’s the thing our Founders understood, which neither the later French revolutionaries or most moderns comprehend. Freedom and equality are in fact mortal enemies.
If you have total freedom, equality is impossible, because some people will be more successful at what they do, and at life itself, than others. The weaker and the less intelligent may even be crushed under the feet of the stronger and the more clever.
If you want total equality, you’re going to have to clamp down on everybody, and ruthlessly cut off every head that pokes above the level of the average.
The American answer to that problem was to set up a system meant to achieve a balance. “Equality of opportunity” means everybody gets as equal a chance in the game as possible. But equality was never enshrined as an American motto, as it was for the French – “Liberty, equality, fraternity.” For Americans it was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As for the losers in life’s game, their care was left to the family and the church. And they were encouraged to try again. America’s bankruptcy system was designed to permit people to start over, something European systems discouraged.
When people used to talk about the American way, that’s what they meant.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy hood with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for patriot dream
that sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Til all success be nobleness
And Ev’ry gain divine.
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy hood with brotherhood,
From sea to shining sea!
America the Beautiful
by Katherine Lee Bates (1910 A.D.)
I’m going to disagree here. In part.
There is one kind of equality that is vital for freedom: Equality under the law.
Without it it is difficult to be free. In fact, without the idea that the law treats all people as equals then freedom is a sick joke, only for some and not for others.
The enslavement of one group of people on account of their skin color is the clearest example of state-sanctioned inequality. There, you had an entire class of people denied freedom. No freedom to rise or fail and rise again. They were perpetually stuck unless the kind graces of their masters granted them freedom.
So, your title, I think is partially incorrect. Equality is only an enemy of freedom when it attempts to deny one the freedom to succeed or fail on their own merits. It is a friend and ally of freedom when it means that people of different groups have equal rights to their own freedoms.
As for your blog post, it only specifies ONE type of equality. There is more than one kind. Equality of property and station is certainly an enemy of freedom, but not equality of legal rights.