To be a serious citizen, it is helpful to identify the big ideas that you really believe. It can be hard to identify any big ideas if you rely on a news media that lack a historical perspective and present emotional fragments and exaggerations as facts. Sometimes you can find big ideas in YouTube lectures by distinguished people.  

Weak political arguments usually rely on an ignorance of history. History leaves a trail of events and facts that can be checked. Wikipedia can print weak theories and opinions, but it tries to check its facts. Many weak arguments melt when facts are checked.

The tension that has arisen between liberty and equality is a big idea that lies behind many political arguments. Once considered partners, equality has become an antagonist of liberty in modern times. How did this come about? Equality has acquired new meanings in the 247 years since the Declaration of Independence. (Politicians tend to confuse the meanings of “freedom”, so we’re using “liberty”.)

Liberty and Equality at the Founding

We take our meaning of “liberty” directly from Locke, Paine, Jefferson, and Madison, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the US Constitution, as the personal freedom of citizens to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The argument behind the USA Founding Documents is the big idea, championed by John Locke, that people are at their best when allowed to do as they see fit, provided they are not harming others (or depriving them of liberty). 

While liberty was the driving force in separating the USA from England, equality also appeared in Enlightenment thinking. When Jefferson said “all men are created equal”, he meant “equal at birth” and “equal before that law”. In 1776, while individual “liberty” was a popular new idea, “equality” was so radical it was still on the drawing board.

Prior to the Declaration of Independence, every government on the planet was authoritarian, including rigid caste systems, and slavery was accepted in every country. At the founding of the USA, there was no other democracy or constitutional republic on earth, and civil rights were non-existent or minimal. Accordingly, equality among people was unthinkable. In 1776, only John Locke, Jefferson, and a few others dared to even think about it.

After 1789, “equal before the law” became a reality for free citizens, and the idea of equality began to evolve and became more complex. This article tracks the evolution that led to development of two competing ideas of equality. One idea of equality (equal opportunity) arises from liberty and is compatible with it. The second idea (equality of outcome), when pursued with vigor, became antagonistic to the first idea, and to liberty itself.

The modern civil rights movement, since the 1950’s, advocated for “equality before the law” and “equal opportunity”, i.e., an equal start. Today’s advocacy for “equality of outcome” goes way beyond civil rights and approaches socialism. Both meanings of equality are important to the current discussion.

Today’s Discussion Includes Different Ideas of Equality

Today’s progressives champion every kind of equality, which they see as more important than liberty. Progressives are eager to reduce liberty in favor of equality. Libertarians place a higher value on liberty than on equality, and they are aware of a substantial conflict between liberty and “equality of outcome”. Libertarians champion “equality of opportunity”. To a libertarian, “equality of outcome” is equivalent to saying “everyone has to tie in every race”.

During this evolution of ideas about equality, the labels “liberal” and “conservative” have lost much of their meaning. Traditional liberals (rare today) wanted to preserve liberty and increase equality of opportunity, while progressive liberals prize equality of outcome and have no reluctance to diminish (or abolish) liberty in their quest for it. Today’s conservatives are not so different from traditional conservatives. They continue to prize liberty and equality (which they see as equal opportunity). 

Historical Evolution of Equality Discussions

At the founding of the USA, in 1789, liberty and equality were seen as dual features of the first constitutional democratic republic. The French Revolution in 1793 had as its slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity”. As we know, the French Revolution got very messy, with vigilante executions of aristocrats with no trials. A key difference between the French Revolution and the USA’s was that the French provided zero rights for the accused. This has been called an “excess of the French Revolution”, but it was actually a design defect in government. The first French republic didn’t know the difference between “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome”, and lapsed into an authoritarian form, because equality of outcome required destruction of the rule of law. Wishing for equality of outcome later had similar effects on the rule of law and liberty in Russia and Cuba.

America was founded in the early years of the industrial revolution. Seventy years later, Karl Marx came along to complicate the discussion of equality. Marx is remembered because he was the first intellectual to worry about equality of outcome. In 1776, when Jefferson wrote “created equal”, everyone took inequality of outcome (even slavery) as a fact of life, like losing at cards. Marx was among the first to say that inequality of outcome was morally wrong, and to seek its elimination.

Equality in the 20th Century

By the late 20th century, intellectuals had seen French, Russia, and Cuba destroy their societies by focusing on equality of outcome while ignoring liberty and the rule of law. US Liberals were willing to tinker with liberty in order to try to increase equality of outcome. Conservatives were generally against such changes and believed equality of opportunity was the best way to approach equality of outcome. As late as the 20th century, US liberals saw equality of outcome as an ideal to be pursued that could never fully achieved, and they were reluctant to place too many limitations on liberty or to defy the rule of law.

Libertarians entered the scene in the mid-20th century with economic findings suggesting that equality of outcome would be practically impossible, because of wide natural differences among people. The 20th century featured a lot of debate on whether all people could be made to be the same or whether people were naturally so different that equality of outcome would be impossible. 

Libertarians argued that equality of outcome would be impossible in practice, and that forcing equality of outcome by depriving people of liberty was morally wrong. By the 21st century, the history of East Germany, North Korea, and Venezuela could be added to that of France, Russia, and Cuba, as evidence that reducing liberty in pursuit of equality of outcome tends to destroy society.

Liberty and Equality Now

Today, Communists, socialists, social democrats, and American Democrats, believe equality of outcome is the main function of government, trumping liberty, economic growth, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the Constitution … everything.

In the 20th century, US Democrats endorsed affirmative action programs to achieve equality of outcome, dispensing with equality of opportunity. For 90 years Democrats have pursued progressive (soak the rich) taxation to achieve equality of outcome, despite strong evidence that limiting economic growth harms the poor more than anyone.  Most recently, many Democrats pursued non-prosecution of crimes to prevent the inequality of so-called “oppressed people” going to jail. The last is strong evidence that US Democrats are now pursuing equality of outcome at the expense of the rule of law, social stability, or anything else.

The Chinese government under Mao Zedong provided evidence that pursuit of equality of outcome at the expense of liberty would destroy a society, but China dramatically reversed certain policies in the 1980’s. While it continues to deny personal liberty, the new China has been more successful by allowing economic liberty and worrying about economic growth more than equality of outcome.

The recent trend of post-modern, neo-Marxist, or “woke” politics fits into the center of this discussion. The main post-modern, neo-Marxist narrative is about equality of outcome and claims that white people (and, lately, Jews and Asians) have conspired to run the world and to oppress the brown and black peoples, employing a newly-discovered phenomenon of “systemic racism”, preventing them from achieving equal outcomes. 

To neo-Marxists, the need for equality of outcome requires bringing down whites (and others who succeed) in a revolution similar to the French, Russian, or Cuban revolutions. Modern leftists increasingly promote neo-Marxist ideas as “social justice” while down playing revolutionary rhetoric. 

The main difference between the neo-Marxist and traditional Democrats used to be that Democrats (unlike neo-Marxists) were willing to compromise with conservatives and libertarians to preserve some liberty, and were unwilling to overturn the rule of law and destroy society to achieve equality of outcome.

More recently, Democrats generally condoned the BLM riots which destroyed several cities and some even supported the Hamas massacre and torture of 1,300 Israelis. Since these activities are best described as neo-Marxist revolutionary actions, support of them has exposed the revolutionary core of “woke leftism”.

Recent Democrat positions seem increasingly to approach or merge with neo-Marxist positions, in that they oppose any measure that would promote freedom of speech, fiscal restraint, economic growth, and rule of law in favor of measures aimed at promoting equality of outcome.

A Final Word

We suggest that responsible citizens ought to consider whether they have a personal interest in preventing further disruption and erosion of liberty, the Constitution, the rule of law, economic growth, social stability, and public education by continuing to pursue policies aimed narrowly aimed at equality of outcome. There is now substantial evidence that equality of outcome cannot be attained with humans, and that further extreme attempts would lead to the destruction of society.

Many Americans remember fondly the tight linkage between liberty and equality and have not thought carefully about the huge difference between “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome”. Liberty and equality of opportunity are embedded in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, and are the essence of the American experience that attracts immigrants who flock to this country. Forcing “equality of outcome” on a society is an attack on everything the American experience has come to stand for. Beyond that, economic research (and common sense) suggest it is impossible to attain.

A confusing aspect of today’s political argument is that advocates of liberty, the Constitution, the rule of law, economic growth, fiscal restraint, education reform, or social stability are quickly labeled by Democrats (and public media you consume) as Nazis, systemic racists, and book-burners who want to destroy “our democracy”. Democrats and public media have joined hands to prevent or limit access of their opponents to public forums, e.g., college campuses, broadcast and social media.

Even more telling is that equality of outcome advocates now believe it is necessary to misrepresent and censor opposing views, and to knowingly lie in public. This behavior suggests an awareness that their arguments are weak indeed.

Our final suggestions are are two:

(1) Before taking sides, look inside each and every political argument and see whether it may be aimed at equality of outcome or equality of opportunity.

(2) Don’t learn about candidates based on what opponents or the media say about them. Go on YouTube and see what they actually are saying themselves.  

Categories: Commentary

Tags: freedom, government, libertarianism, Philosophy, Politics