“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Harrison Bergeron
The Democrat Party has never felt very comfortable with equality. They supported slavery, Jim Crow, and then “separate, but equal.” Finally, in the sixties for political reasons, they joined the Republican Party in supporting equality. That was never a comfortable position for them and today, they’re once again moving away from equality towards “equity.” What is equity you ask? It’s just discrimination by another name. Groups that the Democrats like get rewarded in the name of “equity” while groups that Democrats don’t like, are indifferent to, or at worst, are less favored than other groups, get punished. Of course, they don’t sell it like that. Instead, they tell you that they’re going to actually IMPROVE on equality by micromanaging what help, laws, and programs apply to which people based on what they need. The pitch often involves this cartoon, which, if you’re regularly on social media, you’ve probably seen dozens of times.
Equity is how we achieve equality: https://t.co/9FSDWwSxPR pic.twitter.com/j1XySrWFBL
— Katherine Clark (@RepKClark) February 22, 2021
In and of itself, this cartoon produces lots of obvious questions. Why aren’t these people paying to watch the game? Why are their issues our problems? Why can’t they work this out for themselves? Why in the world do we need the government or some outside group to get involved in fixing this problem? Why do we apparently need a government program to provide boxes for people that don’t pay to watch baseball games? Like this cartoon, the whole concept of “equity” starts to fall apart the moment you take a critical look at it. What’s wrong with the concept of “equity?” Well…
1) It’s impossible to administrate fairly: Do you think that groups that aren’t favored by liberals will ever be judged to need equity? Will women who don’t want to play against transsexual men get equity? How about white basketball players that aren’t good enough to make it in the NBA? Will colleges have to stop discriminating against Asian students because of equity? Of course not. How interested do you think liberals would be in equity if say conservatives were the ones who got to decide what was equitable? We all know that they’d have zero interest in it. That’s because the whole thing is arbitrary, and the real power is in DECIDING who is being treated “equitably” and who isn’t. Even if this were an honest effort, which it isn’t, it’s not doable. In a saner world, people would recognize that only God Himself could possibly look at all the pluses and minuses we all have and give us an accurate breakdown of what we need at just the moment we need it. Parents often can’t even pull that off with their own children and the idea that government can do it is such madness that it’s hard to believe anyone could legitimately believe it possible.
2) It’s discriminatory: It’s never framed that way, but what we’re talking about here is just discrimination. It’s the government picking one group of people they want to do better in some area and either giving them special privileges or penalizing another group to try to make it happen. How else do you read something like this other than punishing the white and Asian kids for doing too well?
BREAKING: Boston Public Schools suspend advanced classes for grades 4-6 amid concerns of racial inequities: https://t.co/Rplp9IeB0R #BOSEdu #MAEdu #mapoli #bospoli
— GBH News (@GBHNews) February 26, 2021
If you decide that it’s okay for the homeless to defecate in the street because they’re homeless, then you punish everyone else that has to walk through it. If you decide that one group is allowed to riot at will, it also means the people they victimize aren’t being given equal protection under the law. It’s morally no different than white-only diners or drinking fountains. If those were wrong and un-American – and they were – this is wrong and un-American.
3) Our government can’t handle it: What makes anyone think that the same government that runs an enormous deficit, botches COVID-relief bills, can’t secure the border, or agree on just about anything is capable of micromanaging what individual people need and then supplying it to them all the way down to their bookshelves?
Do you know the difference between equity and equality? Let's explore the difference and why it matters. https://t.co/n0OWGGQZEu #GetKind #CelebratingDiversity #Equity #Equality pic.twitter.com/5D7gKcscQq
— Random Acts (@RandomActsOrg) February 20, 2021
How can anyone look at the US government and go, “Sure, I think they have the godlike level of competence needed to move beyond equality to giving individuals what they need without discriminating against other people in the process.” Believing something like that doesn’t take optimism, it takes believing in fairy tales.
4) It’s a recipe for societal disaster: Do you think striving for equity will lead to more independence or dependence? More self-reliance or more of a victimhood mentality? More unity or a more balkanized society? More efficiency or more sand in the gears? Will it reward excellence or mediocrity? Will it encourage getting the job done or make excuses? Will it mean a society that functions better or that chokes on an endless array of special privileges for favored groups and penalties for non-favored groups? Liberals may love the idea of a society where people demand everyone else know their pronouns, get horribly offended by “microaggressions,” and get special privileges based on whatever group they happen to identify with today, but all that does ultimately is encourage victimhood, turn people against each other, and it leads to endless debate over trivia. At some point, liberals need to embrace equal treatment and stop trying to create the 10,000th exception to the rules that we’re all supposed to live by.
5) This is an issue for the free market, not the government: We already have a mechanism for achieving equity in American society that accomplishes that aim far better than the government ever could. It’s called the free market. We live in a country where there are 120,000 products in a Wal-Mart and tens of millions more online. Letting people make their own decisions about what they need is a better and more efficient method than having the government do it.
Take, for example, these bikes.
The whole equity vs equality question made me roll my eyes so hard they almost stayed that way.
Can someone show Tom Cotton this since he has a hard time understanding textual definitions apparently? pic.twitter.com/n3gCX0tNdj
— blu2021 (@blu20211) February 22, 2021
If you want a particular type of bike, why shouldn’t you buy it? If you think the government should be in the business of providing it or anything similar, you’re getting into Karl Marx territory. You know:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
We’ve already noted that the government is no substitute for God. As numerous Communist countries could tell you, it’s also not a substitute for a free market, and trying to make it one inevitably leads to poverty, oppression, and disaster.
John Hawkins is the author of 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know
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