America was founded on 3 ideas: Liberty, Justice, Equality. Those words capture the heart and soul of our country. We commit ourselves to those ideas when we Pledge Allegiance to our nation, "with liberty and justice for all". The "for all" is Equality.
What did Equality mean? Equality of what? A cursory study of our history reveals that it was Equality of treatment by the Government, equality under the law, that our Founders set as one of the cornerstones of our country. For perhaps the first time in the history of the world, a nation was formed on principles, and not preferences, privileges or position. Aristocracy, royalty and classes were shunned. All were to be treated the same...by the only thing the Founders were creating, the only thing they could limit...a nation acting through its representative Government.
The Founders recognized that man is the unique species of choice and that our individual minds give each of us the power to make our own individual choices. They enshrined that reality in the Constitution referring to our "right to life"...our right to live our lives as we choose....with the only logical limitation being that we are not free to choose to restrain or to limit the co-equal right of choice of others.
Must I, individually, treat all the same? No. May I choose to befriend only people of certain races, religions, political beliefs? Of course. Invite only them to my home? Of course. Give gifts only to them? Yes. Hire only them? I should be. It is only in our treatment by Government that it can be said that we are equal...for in every other way, we are clearly not equal.
Some of us are are stronger than others, healthier, better looking, smarter, richer, more artistic, more talented in various ways, more creative. We are individuals. We are not equals. We are not peas in a pod, we are not indistinguishable duplicates of each other, we were not made by a cookie cutter. We are each one of a kind, and how much more vibrant, more exciting, more fascinating, are our lives because of it!
The Obama Administration seeks to recast the historical and proper meaning of Equality, bantering around terms like Equality of Opportunity, Equality of Quality of Life, Equality of Entitlements, and more. It is in the name of their erroneous sense of Equality, that Obama wants to take the wealth earned and owned by some and redistribute it to others, to guarantee everyone the same health care, education, housing, to welcome the good and the evil alike to be our partners in life.
A proposal I heard yesterday was to impose a war tax on the "upper class" to pay for the war in Afghanistan (isn't it about time that war was declared?). Is that Equality of treatment by the Government? Is that a classless society? Is Obama creating a privileged class of the poor, the indigent, the disadvantaged?
The problem with every one of the President's programs, no matter how humane you may think them to be, is that it requires forcibly taking money, goods or services away from some to give to others. It is a gross violation of liberty in the name of Equality. And if there is one thing that is and ought be equal about us, it is in our Liberty.
America's greatness rests, or falls, on the equality of our three founding principles, not in the imagined equality of our people.
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