Archive for October 30th, 2006
By Thomas E. Brewton
Words remain the same, but lose their meaning when twisted to fit ideological aims. One such word is equality.
A New York Times editorial dated October 26, 2006, proclaims, "The New Jersey Supreme Court brought the United States a little closer to the ideal of equality yesterday when it ruled that the state's Constitution requires that committed same-sex couples be accorded the same rights as married heterosexual couples."
The Times editorial implicitly presumes that the "ideal of equality" means entitlement to actual equality in all respects. Same-sex marriage is just the latest in a long list of socialist intellectuals' demands that judicial pronouncement, if not statute law, mandate equality of condition, rather than equality of opportunity.
Of course, even for the Times, equality has limits. There is no thought to equal protection of an infant's right to life, when weighed against the "right" to sexual promiscuity implicit in the pro-choice advocacy of abortion.
Our nation was founded on a completely different understanding of equality. Not until President Lyndon Johnson's full-bore-socialist Great Society did the politicians adopt the New York Times's definition of equality as entitlement, rather than opportunity.
English political traditions brought to North America in the early 17th century remained the founding traditions of the United States in the 18th century, when the Constitution was written. In that framework, equality meant only that everyone was entitled to equal treatment under the law, that the ruler, as well as the ruled, was subject to a higher law of God-given morality.
The Bill of Rights was intended, not to legislate equality, but to safeguard individuals' natural-law political liberties from arbitrary government power. One inescapable consequence of the individuality protected by the Bill of Rights is the absolute impossibility of uniform equality in social station, distinction, and income.