Equality is dead in America: We, as Americans who had boldly declared that “all men are created equal” as our collective creed, not only have the world’s largest rich-poor gap, we don’t even believe in equality as our political truth.
The capitalist campaign to equate equality with communism has been so successful that if you shout “EQUALITY!” from a treetop, the echo would send back “SOCIALIST!” It is possible that all Americans were once “created” equal, but today they certainly live, work and die unequal.
Let’s visit France where the French made the creed of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” the centerpiece of their revolution. Today in France, it is mandated that the slogan be displayed on the walls of all public schools and visible in classrooms. Visitors to France today can read these famous battle cries of the French Revolution at all school buildings anywhere, “LIBERTE. EGALITE. FRANTERNITE.” (See photo as seen from our hotel room when we visited France). This revolutionary logo — along with its drama in blood — still stirs the hearts.
Although the revolution in France took place a dozen years (1789) after the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution is still regarded as the mother of all revolutions. Even before 1776, it was France, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau leading the way, which fomented America’s yearning for freedom and independence. It’s still the French (not American) Revolution that remains a sharp dagger against anti-democratic oppression.
But the historic entry of “equality” into the modern political consciousness was made by Americans when they declared that “all men are created equal.” Along with the word “freedom,” equality was one concept that was front and center in every American heart and soul.
After nearly a century of capitalism, however, the very notion of equality has fallen on hard times, both in our hearts and in our minds. In our hearts, we, as satisfied consumers of capitalism, are not sure if we still need equality; and in our minds, we, after decades of capitalist propaganda, easily equate “equality” with hated “socialism,” not with our Founding Fathers who were history’s original egalitarians.
It is almost forgotten that the American republic was created to promote equality for all, even including slaves, declaring history’s most stirring phrase, “all men are created equal.” But, in today’s political-intellectual climate, you risk being called an anti-American socialist by recalling the ideals of equality. Never mind that all Founding Fathers were “socialist” in belief, if not in name. Strangely, now in America, equality is synonymous with anti-Americanism while inequality is glorified as a symbol of American success in “free enterprise.” There, every rich family testifies that capitalism works and every poor person stands just one lottery ticket or one wish or one lucky break away from getting rich. Most insanely in America, we believe equality gets in the way of capitalist success.
In fact, we have quietly and effectively substituted the word “equity” for “equality” — a corrupt version of equality concocted by latter-day liberals. More disingenuously, we have concocted “the equality of opportunity,” saying that, in capitalist prosperity, failures are an inevitable, even necessary, ingredient. Together, these words have successfully strangled the life out of equality in the way the Founders defined it. Nowadays, equality is a boring subject and “all men are created equal” is a meaningless relic of Americana.
A small mental experiment proves that equality in America is truly dead. Let’s say a white Republican congressman visits France and sees “LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY” painted on the walls of all school buildings. Somewhat inspired by the French, and his own Founding Fathers, he returns home with an exciting idea: In America we should do the same as the French, to keep our revolutionary spirit alive, by legislating that all American school buildings have this American revolutionary logo painted on them: “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.”
The congressman expects enthusiastic support from his fellow lawmakers for his proposal that he considers the most “American” of all ideas. But, surprising to him, the public reaction is furiously negative, most ferociously from corporate America and its economics professors, journalists and preachers. Wall Street billionaires are apoplectic and politicians from both sides loudly condemn the proposal as a socialist-communist plot to destroy American capitalism. Predictably, it fails to pass. The nation that defined itself with equality is now refusing to say it loudly 250 years later.
The simple mental experiment reaffirms that equality is dead in America, the nation that first declared that everyone is born equal. Few Americans can publicly say they believe in equality in its original, radical meaning, both “socialist” and “American.” Here and now, America whispers to itself that, really, everybody is not created equal and success is impossible without inequality.
Well, economics professors have famously complicated and twisted the simplest principle of political economy so that nobody, except rich people, can understand it. When things become too “complex” to explain or understand, only the status quo can explain them and only the rich can understand them — all to their benefits. By the time we confuse equality with “equity” and “the equality of opportunity,” the once-pure concept can remain only in its corrupted version. With these economics professors’ help, the rich have conquered the minds and pocketbooks of the American working masses. So, as economic fact, equality is dead as a road to radical justice; and as political truth, equality is buried forever as an “American” idea.
The words are still in the Declaration of Independence and we still hear about them, but sadly, not as living words for justice and truth.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.