Some Are More Equal Than Others
A perennial topic, which will never die until the Left dies, is the misunderstanding, usually a deliberate misunderstanding, of the meaning of the concept of equality in the eyes of the law.
This is precisely the sloppy thinking that is the core of everything wrong in the modern world. I will say this yet again. I never tire of saying it:
The word “equality” is a legal term.
It means that the same laws are enforced on all men in society, regardless of birth. It means two men are the same rank.
Inequality means that some men are nobles, governed by the laws that govern the nobility, and others are peasants, governed by the laws that govern peasantry.
The idea that men in a condition of legal equality would somehow be in a condition of the same comparable material outcomes is not only false, it is the precise opposite of the truth.
There are special laws, found in every society in history but America, that attempt to enforce comparable outcomes upon men of the same rank, that is, that are meant to hinder Serfs in Europe, Untouchables in India, and Burakumin in Japan from achieving wealth and influence.
These laws also establish an upper class with special privileges, such as the right to own land and bear arms, which also attempt to create a rough similarity of outcomes among that class as well, that is, to prevent the upper class from losing wealth and influence.
When these laws are done away with, as we have done in America, and which, to at least some degree, Europeans have done in Europe, the difference in material outcome grows rather than diminishes.
It is precisely for this reason that calls to end disparity of wealth are precisely calls for the end of civil equality.
What the Left (and, now, the Alt-Right) mean when they speak of “equality” is envy.
In an unequal society, that is, one with legally enforced class or caste privileges, the underlings have a legal and social barrier between them and wealth and success.
They will be scorned informally and punished at law formally if they achieve land ownership or are found carrying weapons, or achieve other, forbidden, channels of wealth and success.
Please note as a side light that some class societies allow certain channels of success for underlings but not others: such as moneylenders, lawyers, or players. There were black athletes or entertainers during Jim Crow not legally allowed to drink from white water fountains or stay in white hotels, but who were not barred from these professions. Likewise, Jews in the Middle Ages, not allowed to own land, who could prevail as lawyers or courtiers or money lenders.
For better or worse, the existence of a legal barrier to success hinders envy. I have heard from Englishmen and Australians, and other inferior races, that their middle classes do not want to be seen as ambitious to enter the upper class, and the lower class scorn the middle class, and do not want to be seen as trying to act like them.
Now, what confuses and confounds this whole discussion is that, in America, as in any society, including Utopia itself, men will naturally and inevitably have winners and losers with some achieving greater success than others.
The reason for this difference in outcome simply does not matter.
Some nowadays think it cute or funny to blame the nature, that is, the genetics of the inferiors, that their lack of success is due to race, and some others, most others, think it useful for the devil their father in hell to blame the nurture, that is, the surrounding social circumstances, including hidden racism, hidden white privileges, or the hidden unfairness of having a free market system. Some people combine the worst of both worlds, and blame the Jews for the inequality of outcomes in society.
Now, if the first is correct, there is no solution to the problem of disparities in outcome, because the inferior races cannot compete.
If the second is correct, the solution is to have witch-hunters able to see the unseen evidence of hidden things, and uproot the oppression by finding and burning witches. Since the evidence is unseen, we all simply must take the act of accusation by a witchhunter as final proof of witchcraft.
Please note that invisible “White Privilege” is merely the same idea as invisible “Wage Slave” turned inside out. It is a Communist propaganda technique to call the things by the opposite of reality.
So when one one free man freely bargains with another to exchange wages for services rendered, the Red calls this “wage slavery” and says the wage earner is unaware of his own suffering of oppression due to false consciousness. All this, is in order to get the gullible to hate the social order without thinking about it.
What the Red wants to do is abolish freedom and return to the slaveholding despotism of the past.
Likewise, in a nation where minorities and only minorities are granted special privileges at law, and whites enjoy no legal privileges, this is called “white privilege” and says the privileged class is unaware of its own privileges, in order to get the gullible to hate the the social order without thinking about it. What the Red wants to do is abolish freedom and return to the despotic despotism of the past.
The point is that both things are said to be invisible, something only anointed witch-hunters with special magic eyesight can see, but in reality both things are unseen because they are unreal. If the second is correct, we must place witch-hunters in charge of the world.
If the third is correct, the solution is to have Jew-hunters exterminate the Jews, so that their wicked imposition of unequal outcomes on nice German lads will go away somehow and Utopia emerge from nowhere somehow.
In reality, all three positions are mere nonsense. In reality, disparity of outcomes exists no matter what the social order. I have it on good authority, divine authority in fact, that there will be poor among us always.
The disparity of outcomes is because God makes men different, with different skills and flaws, tempted by different sins, visited by different talents.
Let us remember the parable of the talents for a moment. The servant with one talent buried it so as not to lose it, and offered his master no return on investment. The more able servant with two talents made two more and returned four; the most able servant with five talents made five more and returned ten. The unprofitable servant was cast into outer darkness, and his one talent given to he who had ten.
God expects unequal outcomes because he bestowed unequal abilities. Whether those are nature or nurture matters not in the least: it is the case that there are more Blacks in the NBA and more Germans in the USBA (United States Brewers Association — originally, it was all men with German last names.)
The Leftwing idea that inequality of outcomes can only be due to hidden oppression and racism, that is, nurture, is not only demonstrably false, it is a blasphemy. God gives different talents to different men, and does not expect him given two talents, or one, to produce ten.
The Left would have use force Blacks out of the NBA and make them brew beer, and force the Germans onto the basketball court, until there were the same proportionate number of German, Irish, Serb, Aztec, Lithuanian, Etruscan, Indochinese, Japanese, Lilliputian, and Hmong ballers as are found in the native population of the United States taken as a whole.
And then do the same for male and female ballplayers and brewmeisters, gay and straight, trans and cis, fat and thin, old and young, and then they will make up other groups allegedly oppressed by other alleged groups, on the legal theory of … of … call a Jew a Nazi and phone in a bomb threat if he attempts to speak on campus. That is the Left.
The idea that inequality of outcomes an only be due to hidden genetic but not cultural factors, that is, nature, is not only demonstrably false, it is also a blasphemy. God punishes men who bury their talent, but rewards the servant who makes two or makes five: clearly this reward is based on their work, not a privilege of birth.
If it is the case, for example, that if you count up the IQ scores or look at the success rates of some group of men, and you get to define where the boundaries of the groups rest, then you can basically assign any individual any success rate you wish.
According to the data, at least 15 percent to 20 percent of black Americans exceed the average IQ of white Americans. And according to this German study kids fathered by black soldiers scored the same as kids fathered by white soldiers.
Even if the most extreme of the race realist claim were real, all it means is that a high IQ black is harder to find if you are picking him at random from a group grouped by skin color than if you pick him based on IQ test scores from a group grouped by IQ test scores.
Think about that for a second. The selfsame individual, me, is a member of any number of different groups: science fiction writer, European ancestry, Anglosaxon culture, Pennsylvania Dutch master-race, bald guy, lawyer, journalist, genius, Christian, Catholic, American. Each of these groups has a different average IQ score. But my IQ is not going up and down from moment to moment.
Heck, my IQ score changes depending on whether or not you classify Spanish speakers as Caucasian, that is, European, or whether you classify Spanish speakers as Darkies, that is, non-white minority. If you add in Jews, the average goes up. But if you add in other races found in my family and extended family, I get to average in Chinese and Japanese as well as Jewish and Pennsylvania Dutch. But I have one son who is severely retarded, which brings the average down again.
So who in hell cares about membership in a collective group?
Is my family going to be excluded from the whites-only ethnostate the race realists want to establish in the place of the United States?
If so, then you are merely Leftists again, by another name, and enemies of the cross and of the flag. You are merely one more form of tyrant. My answer to you is written in the motto of Virginia.
Why not judge each man on his merit? Anything else is devilry. It is the work of hell.
If any race realist is honestly worried about being in the minority in your own land, move to Utah. The racial mix there differs from what is found in southern border states, or coastal metropoli, or wherever you are from. An increase of the number of Cubans living in Florida, or Nesei in Hawaii, which will indeed put your race into the statistical minority, then will no longer effect you. Or move to New Zealand. Wonderful weather, or so I hear.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
