I spent several
weeks last summer discussing the rhetorical tactics of feminism, in a largely critical
manner. Despite the impression of disapproval that might have given, I’m
actually quite sympathetic to the cause of feminism, as well as that of leftist social justice movements in
general. So today, I’d like to delve into the actual content of these movements.
Regardless of my frustrations with how
they argue, are they at least right? Do they have good points? When, if ever,
do they go too far?
Specifically,
I’d like to talk about “privilege,” a term which dominates much of the
progressive blogosphere regarding feminism, race, economic justice, and various
conceptions of equality. I’ve organized my thoughts about privilege into four main
points. The first provides an overview of privilege for the uninitiated, which
can probably be skipped by those who are already acquainted with the term.
Part I: What is the
privilege?
Privilege,
as I see it, is the unearned advantage one derives from how they are treated by
society, relative to how other people in that society are treated. It first
came into widespread use after an influential 1990 article by women’s studies
professor Peggy McIntosh called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible
Knapsack.” This feminism 101 blog defines it this way:
Privilege, at its
core, is the advantages that people benefit from based solely on their social
status. It is a status that is
conferred by society to certain groups, not seized by individuals, which is why
it can be difficult sometimes to see one’s own privilege.
Since social status
is conferred in many different ways — everything from race to geography to
class — all people are both privileged and non-privileged in certain aspects of
their life.
The various
“aspects of life” which may confer social advantages can be referred to as an
“axis” of experience (for example, race). Along each axis, the privilege
narrative divides the world’s inhabitants into those classes which have
privilege (in this case, white people) and those which do not (in this case,
racial minorities). Commonly alleged axes of privilege include race, sex,
sexuality, gender, religion, and wealth (I’ll get into some of the less common,
but still frequently alleged sources of privilege later on). Feminism 101 goes
on to explain:
“Possessing "privilege"…is not intended to imply that
life is objectively easy, just that on that particular axis of experience it is
likelier to have been easier than a person similarly situated but without that
particular privilege.”
Intersectionalism,
a key concept in third-wave feminism and the modern social justice movement, is
the examination of how those axes intersect, working to the magnified advantage
of those who belong to several privileged classes at once (for example, a
straight white male), and exacerbated disadvantage of those who belong to
several less privileged classes at once (for example, a lesbian black female).
In this way, the privilege narrative divides the world’s inhabitants according
to the relative amounts of net privilege they possess. Those classes which lack
privilege are seen as socially oppressed.
It should
be noted, before I begin the next section, that I think the privilege narrative
is essentially correct. Many groups truly are treated unjustly due to illogical
or hateful prejudices about their innate characteristics. I am uncertain as to how damaging the effects of this
treatment generally are, or to what extent social status works to people’s
disadvantage in the advanced liberal democracies of 21st century
western civilization. But I am convinced it is enough of an injustice as to
warrant significant concern, attention, and alterations in the way we treat one
another. As it relates to feminism in particular, I briefly outlined some of
the ways male privilege rears its ugly head here.
But not
all of this leftist narrative is correct, and the rest of this post will focus
on the parts which are not. This is not because I wish to see the movement
fail; on net, I think it does more good than bad, and there are many cases in
which I rush to its aid when debating some of my more conservative friends. But
the parts which are correct are more
eloquently defended in other parts of the internet by people with a better
perspective of the topic than I. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the
conservative retort; since many social conservatives are woefully ignorant
about these matters, and oftentimes outright offensive, I encounter far fewer
coherent rebuttals to leftist arguments than conservatives might make were they to think on matters a bit longer. This post
will be my first attempt to illustrate the excesses and irrationalities of
certain corners of the “privilege” blogosphere – not as a condemnation of
privilege awareness, but as a good faith effort to tease out the good from the
bad.
Part II: Discerning natural
from imposed privilege
The first
problem I see with this way of understanding the world is that the word
privilege is overbroad. Too often, privilege is used as an umbrella term that conflates
very different sorts of social advantages, which we as social reformers should
afford different levels of concern.
Some
privilege originates from the way humans interact with one another, and the
disparate treatment some demographics receive thanks to illogical and unjust
prejudice against people of their characteristics. For example, many men choose
to rape or sexually assault women. This makes women rationally fearful of rape
and sexual assault as they go about their daily lives in ways men are not. This
fear often prevents women from doing things men would do without a second
thought. Therefore, men have the privilege of going about their daily lives
without worrying very much about the possibility that they will be raped or
sexually assaulted, and this privilege
originates from the fact that men rape women. This is a terrible injustice
which we as a society must rectify.
Other alleged “privileges”, however, come not from
how we choose to treat one another so much as from our random assignment in the
lottery of birth. Any given person’s likelihood of success in life’s various
pursuits is influenced by the set of genetic traits and environmental
circumstances into which they were born, prior to and independent of their
interactions with other human beings. For example, smart people have advantages
over stupid people, and attractive people have it easier than ugly people. Children
with two loving and caring parents have advantages over orphans. Athletic or coordinated
people have an edge over clumsy people. Black people are more likely to get
sickle-cell anemia, while white people have to deal with skin cancer more often.
Women have to deal with menstruation and pregnancy – men don’t. People with
good eyesight have advantages over people who need glasses. I could go on; there
are thousands of ways in which unique individuals with unique upbringings and genetic
codes are different from one another, and some of these differences bestow
natural advantages. This means that even if there ever comes a day when
everyone treats one another with equal dignity and respect, some will still be
better equipped for success at certain endeavors than others. The natural
differences between us will always create winners and losers. None of this is
an injustice.
The trouble with the privilege narrative
espoused at the extremes of the progressive blogosphere is that it lumps these
things together, thereby blurring the line between the artificial disadvantages
we impose on one another through unfair and disparate treatment, and the
automatic disadvantages which result from natural variation in our abilities
and general life situation. Much of the political left either fails to see or
refuses to admit the distinction between using one’s abilities to acquire just
deserts, and using one’s privilege as leverage for personal gain. To understand
why, you have to go back to a set of classic philosophical debates from the
1970’s.
Part III: Nozick > Rawls
The short answer is that the left is broadly
characterized by an aversion to the notion of merit, which at the extremes
metastasizes into the belief that there is no such thing as merit. As Wikipedia testifies, famous progressive hero
John Rawls championed this mindset:
“One of the
most controversial rejections of the concept of desert was made by the political
philosopher John Rawls. Rawls…claimed
that a person cannot claim credit for being born with greater natural
endowments (such as superior intelligence or athletic abilities), as it is
purely the result of the 'natural lottery'. Therefore, that person does not
morally deserve the fruits of his or her talents and/or efforts, such as a good
job or a high salary.”
Stephen Metcalf, libertarian critic and writer
for Slate.com, explains Rawls’ view in more depth here:
“In A Theory of Justice,
Rawls argued that our talents are not really our own, because they are not
morally intrinsic to us. Rawls asked us to imagine that we know nothing about
our life advantages—that how gifted, smart, attractive, charismatic we are, as
well as the socio-economic status of our parents, lie behind a veil of
ignorance. He then asked us to design an insurance policy against poor
accidents of birth. That insurance policy would be "justice," in the
form of a society that was fair even from the perspective of its least well-off
citizen—who, after all, passing through the veil of ignorance, might turn out
to be us.”
From this
perspective, there is no moral distinction between the two types of privilege I
outlined above. It’s not an unintelligent person’s fault that they’re unintelligent, they’d reason, so how can it be
fair that they be disadvantaged in life for that?
The famous libertarian
answer to John Rawls was another Harvard Professor named Robert Nozick, who
wrote Anarchy, State and Utopia a few
years after Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Metcalf
summarizes:
To this, Nozick
replies: All that intellectual pomp, arrayed to convince me that my talents are
not mine? But my talents aren't
like fire and disease. They aren't fatalities I insure against. Quite the
opposite: My talents constitute the substance of who I am, and I am right to
bank on them.
Wikipedia explains it at slightly greater length:
Nozick claimed that to treat peoples' natural
talents as collective assets is to contradict the very basis of the
deontological liberalism Rawls wishes to defend, i.e. respect for the
individual and the distinction between persons.[2]Nozick argued that Rawls' suggestion that not only natural talents but
also virtues of character are undeserved aspects of ourselves for which we
cannot take credit, "can succeed in blocking the introduction of a
person's autonomous choices and actions (and their results) only by attributing
everything noteworthy about the person completely to certain sorts of
'external' factors. So denigrating a person's autonomy and prime responsibility
for his actions is a risky line to take for a theory that otherwise wishes to
buttress the dignity and self-respect of autonomous beings."…
[W]hile it might be true that peoples' actions
are, in whole or in part, determined by factors that are morally arbitrary this
is irrelevant to assignments of distributive shares. The reason for this is that
individuals are self-owners with inviolable rights in their bodies and talents,
and they have the freedom to take advantage of these regardless of whether the
self-owned properties are theirs for reasons that are morally arbitrary or not.
Hell yeah, Wikipedia guy! I couldn’t have said it better myself. But I’ll
try anyway…
I think the central
question distinguishing Rawls and Nozick, and perhaps distinguishing the
liberal and conservative mindsets in American society more broadly, may be
summarized thusly: are human beings ever justified in feeling pride or guilt?
Liberals appear to
lean towards no. We shouldn’t feel too proud of our successes (like getting
into a good college or acquiring lots of wealth or winning a sporting
competition), because really, we only got lucky. We would not have been able to
get into that college were we not born with a certain level of intelligence,
into a family or school district that valued hard work and gave us every
opportunity to get good grades. Inversely, we shouldn’t feel too ashamed about
our fuck-ups (like committing a crime or failing a test) because that outcome
likely resulted from our placement in a less advantageous set of circumstances.
When Barack Obama cajoles business owners they “didn’t build that,” he is
proceeding from the assumption that they should temper their pride because
their accomplishments (and, inversely, other people’s lack of accomplishments)
were primarily decided by factors beyond their control.
Conservatives are
the opposite. Conservatives doubt whether our every success or failure is
solely the result of whose uterus we popped out of. They may (and should!)
concede that we are each influenced by an infinite number of variables beyond
our control, the origins of which we will never be able to fully trace. But to
conservatives, that shouldn’t make the resulting human less accountable for
their decisions. They value personal responsibility and “pulling yourself up by
the bootstraps”, so to speak., and feel strongly that our decisions can influence
our life in ways that were not predetermined the moment we came into the world.
Thus, we are right to feel proud for doing good, and ashamed for doing bad. Furthermore, conservatives understand that our traits, whether they’re
good, bad or neutral, helpful or inconvenient, are the essence of who we are.
They are our definition, our trademark, our unique identifiers, the only thing
that distinguishes one person from another. Consequently, conservatives hold successful people in
higher esteem (and vice-versa) than liberals tend to do.
Both sides are
partially right, but that means they’re also partially wrong. Success is certainly
more dependent on external factors than “meritocracy” conservatives will admit.
But at the same time, it’s also probably less dependent on our circumstances
than liberals will admit, and that’s what’s wrong with the privilege narrative
of the Social Justice Warriors. Carried to its modern extremes, it strips
people of their autonomy as independent decision makers, and of their
accountability for the outcome of those decisions, to too great an extent.
(This same dichotomy resurfaces in debates about drug
addiction, but that’s a subject for another day.)
Another way to look at this is to distinguish between “fault” and
“responsibility.” Life coach Travis Robertson has a brilliant, succinct post about this here. If you are a
lifeguard and some kid shits in the pool, that is not your fault – but it is
damn well your responsibility. So too in life: everyone is their own lifeguard.
If the company you work at collapses due to mismanagement, and you lose your
job, that may not be your fault – but it is still your responsibility to provide
for you and your family. You are not morally culpable for the calamities which
befall you, but it’s nobody’s responsibility but yours to deal with them.
The left conflates these things all the time. My
Dad and I were listening to NPR a few years ago when we heard an interview with
someone who wrote a biography of Barack Obama’s father. The author was parrying
what she saw as simplistic attacks on his father’s character from members of
the political right, and about 29 minutes in to the interview she said the following:
“You know, there are people who dismiss Barack Obama Sr. as a
drunk and a wife beater – that’s just not fair to him. He’s a very complicated
person, a very talented person who was caught in the midst of two different
cultures. One was the Luau culture in which he was raised, and the other was
the cosmopolitan life of newly independent Nairobi. It wasn’t entirely clear
what a man’s role was; you would live in Nairobi, the city life, you’d go back
to the village where the old traditions prevailed. I’m not trying to excuse
anything that he did, but I think it’s important that to understand him you
understand where he came from, what his childhood was like, what polygamous
culture was that he was raised in – you have to understand that to understand
what his life was.”
My Dad and I looked at each other and rolled our
eyes. I have no doubt Barack Obama Sr. lived in a confusing time for a Kenyan
intellectual man. I’m sure he had a tough upbringing, and that his abusive
father had an influence on how he turned out. I’m equally sure that after his mother
left him in fear of his father, when Barack Sr. was only 9, it became difficult
for him to trust people in committed relationships. But what is most certain of
all is this: due to these reasons or others, Barack Obama Sr. became a drunken wife beater!
In no way does the environment in which somebody
grows up influence how “fair” or “unfair” it is to call them what they are. People
make decisions in life, and no amount of interesting speculation as to the
factors which compelled them to decide as they did alters the consequences of those
actions or their moral responsibility for them. The left needs to learn that
“my surroundings made me do it” is not a cogent excuse. The author pretends she
is “not trying to excuse anything that he did,” but suggesting the titles
“drunk” and “wife-beater” are an unfair characterization of someone who,
according to her own research, frequently got drunk and beat his wives, does
exactly that.
Martin Luther King’s
most famous quote from his most famous speech announced “I have a dream: that
one day my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character.” Ironically, the modern left appears
unwilling to bring his dream to fruition: they will not judge even on the content of people’s
character!
Part IV: Implications for Social Justice Movements
Guided by Rawlsian
mindsets, leftist social justice movements have broadened the parameters of privilege so as
to include even natural advantages.
Privilege is…[a]bout how society
accommodates you. It’s about advantages you have that you think are normal. It’s about you being normal, and
others being the deviation from normal. It’s about fate dealing from the bottom
of the deck on your behalf…
But aren’t some
advantages I have normal? The vast majority of human beings on the planet have
advantages over autistic people, or people with epilepsy. People who do have
autism or epilepsy are, statistically speaking, the deviation from the norm. Therefore,
the people who don’t have epilepsy have a very normal, commonplace advantage
over those who do. This is not ordinarily considered an injustice.
Saying that plainly
makes the left uncomfortable, perhaps because for a long time, society wrongly
associated normalcy with superiority. Abandoning that association is necessary,
admirable and ongoing work – but it doesn’t require shedding empirical observations
about what is and is not normal. MENSA members are abnormal too. So are red
haired people. Most people still realize that ginger geniuses are not lesser
human beings! When fate deals us our unique hand in life, it makes all of us
abnormal in some way or another. So long as we treat individuals of all
abnormalities with equal dignity and respect as we go about our daily lives, that’s
not a problem.
The blogger continues:
Some privileges are easy to demonstrate: Can you go into a random
restaurant and order food? That's not something that those with food allergies,
diabetics, celiacs, or a range of other conditions can count on. It's not
something people whose religious convictions include following Kosher, Halal or
other faith-based dietary restrictions (there are Christians, Buddhists and
others to whom this applies) can count on in western society either.
Sorry, but no:
that’s not privilege. If you are allergic to certain foods, the resulting
disadvantage you face in life stems from your unfortunate genetic precondition,
not from unfair treatment at the hands of other people. If your religion
precludes you from eating certain foods, the resulting disadvantage you face is
a self-imposed consequence of your decision to abide by that religious precept.
Other people should treat you kindly and respect your rights, but they are not obligated
to cater to your dietary preferences at the expense of more popular products, and
it’s not unjust if they choose not to.
Perhaps the most
illustrative example in her post comes near the end:
“When I was in high school, we played a game we called
Asshole, or to be polite, Donkey, which was a basic discard card game. The
twist was that after each round, when the next round's cards were dealt, the
loser had to give their two highest cards to the winner, who could give any two
cards to the loser. Obviously, this set-up disadvantaged the loser, and
benefited the winner. But even with that advantage, the loser could still win
the next round, and the winner could still lose. That doesn't mean there was a level playing field.”
But in
keeping with this analogy, modern progressives seem to be arguing that there
would not be a level playing field even without
the rule that the loser had to give their two highest cards to the winner, on
the grounds that not everyone is dealt
the same cards! Instead of insisting on fair rules that are applied evenly
to all players, and then allowing the cards to fall where they may, the radical
intersectionalists demand that those dealt high cards take it easy on those
dealt low cards, so that all hands truly have an equal opportunity at success.
There
seem to be no bounds on the list of “privileges” which can give
someone advantages the left deems unfair. Vanilla privilege is said to apply to anyone
who is not kinky, or lacks uncommon sexual fetishes. Ableist privilege is said to apply to anyone
who isn’t mentally or physically
handicapped. Neurotypical privilege applies to people who have
“a type of neurology that is expected and/or favored by the society in which
one lives. (i.e., having a “normal” or “typical” brain, and the typical sensory
processing/body movements/facial expressions associated with a typical
neurological system.) In plain English, it means not being autistic or mentally
handicapped.
Thin privilege, sometimes extended to “socially acceptable body size
privilege” so as to exclude anorexics or people society sees as “too thin,” is
said to apply to anyone of normal weight. It’s inverse, fattism or “fat
phobia”, is said to be “thin privilege in action.” This is sometimes accompanied by denial of the overwhelming medical consensus that being overweight is
unhealthy on the basis that these studies are only funded by companies
marketing weight-loss products – a sobering similarity to the arguments put forth
by anti-vaxxers and anti-GMO nutjobs. When British columnist Lousie Mensch
remarked in passing that “vertical
stripes don't make you look thinner, jogging on the treadmill for half an hour
five times a week makes you look thinner", she was called “fattist”
for suggesting a link between exercise and losing fat. Mensch later satirized her critics thusly:
“Why should anybody want to have a
healthy body weight? How dare I say that fashion models aren't "normal
women"? What about those women who are just naturally the size of
spaghetti sticks? Anyway, what are normal curves? This is cis-ist to
transsexual women who don't have wombs…
At this point, I had drifted off into
Monty Python's Life of Brian, where Stan and Judith are debating whether they
should stick up for Stan's "right to have babies" even though he
can't have babies.”
It gets
worse. Adult privilege, somewhat self-explanatorily,
apparently pertains to the oppression of children. This one is unique in that
the underprivileged class is not seen as a permanent underclass so much as a
group of pledges undergoing a rite of passage. Children’s rights are an
interesting topic, but since literally everyone
goes through childhood, this hardly seems a case of entrenched systemic
oppression we must eliminate root and branch.
Educational
privilege is also sometimes alleged. The logic is that wealthier
people are more likely to live in good school districts and safe environments,
or better able to afford SAT prep classes and the like, so how educated you
become is really just chalked up to fate. Nerds like me might have something to
say about that. I seem to recall that how well educated I became had a whole-effing-lot
to do with how hard I tried in school, whether I studied and applied myself,
how intelligent and driven and curious I was relative to my peers, etc. If what
you’re telling me is that I didn’t really earn
my Hopkins admission or diploma, you done touched a raw nerve.
Even
sillier is monogamous privilege; apparently, some people
out there believe opposing polygamy amounts to oppression of those who engage
in it. Now, I’m all for tolerating people who choose to live in a different way
than you do, and I would even legalize polygamous marriage (for so long as the
state must be involved in marriage at all). Live and let live! You do your thing, I’ll do mine –
this is the heart of libertarianism. But with that said, to the best of my knowledge,
monogamous preferences are not something you’re born with. Rather, polygamy
ensues from a personal moral judgment about the acceptability of certain types
of relationships, which is totally subjective and up for critique.
This sort
of “privilege is different than racial or sexual privilege, for instance,
because society is judging you based on the choices you make and the beliefs
you hold, NOT on your inherent characteristics. By analogy, many people believe
incest is immoral, but different cultures have different beliefs on what counts
as incest (many Middle Eastern cultures will happily marry cousins, for instance). Perhaps
society should be more tolerant of incestuous people, but perhaps they should
not - that’s a topic on which intelligent and compassionate people may well
disagree. Therefore, the fact that some people believe incest is immoral, and
as such disavow it and publicly reprimand or condemn those who choose to engage
in it, is more the product of a principled disagreement than some indefensible
systematic bias. In either case, the point is this: when you choose to engage in activities which many people
believe are immoral, you open yourself up to criticism from those people.
That’s not unjust. The law should be equal to everybody, but we as individuals
are under no obligation to remove stigmas from things we deeply believe should
have stigmas attached to them.
Anyway, you get the idea. How long until we see this same logic apply to “smart privilege”, “attractive
privilege”, or “tall privilege”? Is the left unwilling to consider the possibility that any
personal characteristics which one person has might be legitimately superior to
those which another person has? Is this narrative so far divorced from
discussion of merit as to assume that all people are equally qualified in all
things? that all social preferences for one trait over another must be
based purely in an illogical and unjust –ism? This is liberal guilt gone overboard.
It’s one
thing to be anti-bullying, and we should absolutely be nicer to those who often
are bullied (say, stupid, fat, or ugly people). To borrow progressive
terminology, when we’re mean to these people, our discriminatory treatment
erects additional barriers for the bullied, and confers privileges for the
non-bullied. But talk of privilege goes further than that, suggesting that even
those life advantages which attractive and intelligent people possess independent of their disparate treatment
by other humans is some fundamental injustice. This is very, very wrong.
People
ought to treat you kindly, but they are not obligated to go out of their way to
accommodate your unique situation. Abnormally fat people are not entitled to
wider airplane seats or clothing in their size, and disabled people who cannot
walk are not entitled to ramps or parking spaces. That’s what separates
inherent disadvantages stemming from the genetic lottery from constructed
disadvantages arising from our interactions with one another. You’re not
entitled to an even shake from the get go.
The same is true for
feminism. Prominent feminist Jessica Valenti recently demanded that
the cost of tampons be covered by the government, in order to erase the
financial disadvantage menstruation places upon women. In so doing, she cries
“oppression!” due to a disadvantage females face (cost) which was imposed not
by disparate treatment (say, laws which price products , but by natural
variation in our genetic traits (whether or not we menstruate). Once again, she
predictably conflates natural from artificial advantages.
Similarly, the fact that
women get pregnant and men don’t is not the consequence of sexism; it’s the
consequence of biology. If that places women at a disadvantage in certain jobs,
that is not an injustice. This means that the absence of paid maternity leave
is neither unequal nor unjust, and laws requiring it are unjustified. That last
sentence would send many feminists into tizzy, precisely because of the
misconception I’m describing: they view equality in terms of equal outcomes,
rather than equal treatment. So even within a male/female framework for which
there IS plenty of legitimate oppression,
the left sometimes exaggerates the injustice by citing some “privileges” that
are not like the others.
When
coupled with the left’s growing and previously decried unwillingness to hear
dissent, this becomes truly, erm, “problematic.” Consider the “Primer on Privilege” post from earlier:
“acknowledging privilege is a necessary pre-requisite to talking about
race: Because the privileged and the
un-privileged live on the same planet, but in two different worlds. If you
don't begin by acknowledging your privilege, then the chasm between is too vast
to traverse. There can't be productive conversation between a person who thinks
they've gotten where they are on their own merits, and someone who knows that they would never have been given the opportunity to compete
on the basis of their merits.”
This is textbook begging the question. The
existence and precise parameters of different kinds of intersecting privilege
are very often the very thing which is up for debate. When the left shuts out
anybody who doesn’t immediately accept their opinion on those matters, it
misses opportunities to inform the ignorant and convince the inconsiderate –
whichever side that happens to be.
There most certainly CAN be productive
conversations between people who believe primarily in merit, and people who
believe primarily in privilege; between those who agree with Nozick, and those
who agree with Rawls. The chasm seems frustrating, but that makes traversing it
all the more rewarding and important. These days, liberals and conservatives
alike seem to be eschewing that challenge to retreat into comforting
ideological echo-chambers that reinforce their worldview, so hopefully this
post will get the ball rolling a bit with some productive engagement.
Part V: Conclusions on
Privilege
Ultimately, my conclusions are as follows.
1. Privilege is real, and worth talking about. It is important to familiarize
onself with the concept, and bear it in mind throughout your daily life,
because it has serious and far-reaching implications for morally optimal behavior.
2. However, privilege and intersectionality do not comprise a comprehensive framework
for interpreting the world. It cannot explain all (or even most, from my
view) differences in outcome between separate persons.
3. Not everything the left calls “privilege” is unjust. Of those privileges which
are unjust, not all of should be afforded the same level of moral outrage or
concern.
4. We should stop trying to
distinguish between advantages based on merit and advantages based on luck,
because that distinction is impossible to make and unhelpful to attempt.
Instead, we should distinguish between
those disadvantages which are natural, and those which are artificial;
those which are present from birth, and those which are imposed by human
action. The first are unavoidable; the second are oppression.
And,
lastly, some relevant quotes from historical figures:
· “Distinctions in society will always exist under
every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot
be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven
and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally
entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these
natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles,
gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent
more powerful, the humble members of society – the farmers, mechanics, and
laborers – who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to
themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government…If it
would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower
its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an
unqualified blessing.” – Andrew Jackson, Veto Message of the National Bank,
1832
·
“The
idea of forcing everything to an artificial equality has something, at first
view, very captivating in it.” However, “Those who attempt to level never
equalize” — the very attempt is a “monstrous fiction, which by inspiring false
ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of
laborious life serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality.”
–Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
· "You
cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America
does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a
particular national group in America has not yet become an American." –
Woodrow Wilson
“Assume responsibility for the quality of your own life.”
– Norman Cousins
· “Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end
of your arm.” – Audrey Hepburn