Equal: But Not the Same; E. A. Opitz

Along with the words Life, Liberty, and Property, the word Equality has a prominent place in the political vocabulary of American thought. The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of The Foundation for Economic Education, a seminar lecturer, and author of the book, Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies. Our Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Note well that the men who prepared· this document did not say that all men are equal; they did not say that all men are born equal or should be equal, or are becoming equal. These several propositions are obviously untrue. The Declaration said: "cre ated equal." Now, the created part of a man is his soul or mind or psyche. Man's body is compounded of the same chemical and physical elements which go into the makeup of the earth's crust, but there is a mental and spiritual essence in man which sets him apart from the natural order. Man alone among the creatures of earth is created in God's image-meaning that man has free will, the capacity to order his own actions, and so become the kind of person God intends him to be.

The political theory enunciated in the Decla ration is based upon certain assumptions about human nature and destiny which were ingre dients of the religion professed by our fore bears. It was an article of faith in the religious tradition of Christendom-a culture com pounded of Hebraic, Greek, and Roman ele ments-that man is a created being. To say that man is a created being is to affirm that man is a work of divine art and not a mere acci dental by-product of physical and chemical forces. Man is God's property, said John Locke, because He made us and the product belongs to the producer. As an owner, God cares for that which belongs to Him. Therefore, the soul of each person is precious in God's sight, whatever the person's outward circumstances. "God is no respecter of persons." (Acts 10:34) He " ... makes His sun to rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and dishonest." (Matt. 5:45) Equality before the law is the practical applica tion of this understanding of the nature of the human person. Equal justice means that a na tion's laws apply, across the board, to all sorts and conditions of men, regardless of race, creed, color, position, pedigree, income, or whatever. In the eyes of the law, all are alike.

But right there the likeness ends; human beings are different and unequal in every other way; they are male and female, in the first place-and they are tall and short, thick and thin, weak and strong, rich as well as poor, and so on. They are equal in one respect only; they are on the same footing before the law. Equality before the law is the same thing as po litical liberty viewed from a different perspec tive; it is also justice-a regime under which no man and no order of men is granted a polit ical license issued by the State to use other men as their tools or have any other legal advantage over them. Given such a framework in a so ciety, the economic order will automatically be free market, or capitalistic. (We are speaking now of the idea of equality in a political con text. Later I shall deal with the opposing con cept of economic equality, which is incompat ible with limited government and the free market.) Political Equality Political equality is the system of liberty, and its leading features are set forth in Jefferson's First Inaugural Address: "Equal and exact jus tice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,-entangling alliances with none. . .freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus" and so on.

The idea of political equality-equal justice before the law-is a relatively new one. It did not exist in the ancient world. Aristotle opened his famous work entitled Politics with an at tempted justification of slavery, concluding his argument with these words: "It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others 125 slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right. ' , Plato conceived the vision of a society con structed like a pyramid. A few men are at the top wielding unlimited power; then descending levels of power-the men on each level being bossed by those above and bossing, in turn, those below. On the bottom are the slaves, who outnumber all the rest of society. Plato knew that those in the lower ranks would be discon tented with their subservient position, so he proposed a myth to condition them with-in his words-a "noble lie," or an "opportune falsehood." "While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation. . . but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen." You know dam well that fraudulent theories of this sort are in vented by men who suspect gold in their own makeup!

Hinduism, with its system of castes, pro vides a contemporary example of a system of privilege. Men are born into a given caste, and that's where they stay; that's where their an cestors were, and that's where their descend ents will be. There is no ladder leading from one level in this society to any of the others. Hinduism justifies these divisions between men by the doctrine of reincarnation, arguing that some are suffering now for misdemeanors committed during a previous existence, while others are being rewarded now for earlier virtue. This outlook breeds fatalism and social stagnation. The eminent Hindu philosopher and statesman, S. Radhakrishnan, defends the caste system with a metaphor. He likens society to a lamp and says, "When the wick is aglow at the tip the ,whole lamp is said to be burning. ' , Politics-it must be emphasized-rests upon certain assumptions in basic philosophy.

We of the West make different philosophical assumptions than do Greek and Hindu philoso phers, for we have a different religious heritage than they. The fountain source of the religious heritage of Christendom is, of course, the Bible. The Bible was the textbook of liberty for our forebears, who loved to quote such texts as "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib erty," (2 Cor. 3:17) and, "You shall know the 126 THE FREEMAN. APRIL 1988 truth, and the truth shall make you free." (Jn. 8:32) And they turned often to the Old Testa ment prophets with their emphasis on justice and individual worth. Let me quote a few lines from an unsigned editorial appearing in the magazine Fortune some years ago: The United States is not Christian in any formal sense, its churches are not full on Sundays and its citizens transgress the pre cepts freely. But it is Christian in the sense of absorption. The basic teachings of Chris tianity are in its bloodstream. The central doctrine of our political system-the invio lability of the individualis the doctrine in herited from 1900 years of Christian insis tence upon the immortality of the soul.

It takes a while, centuries sometimes, for a new idea about man to seep into the habits, laws, and institutions of a people and shape their culture. It was not until the eighteenth century that Adam Smith came along and spelled out a system of economics premised on the freely choosing man. Smith referred to his system as "the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice. " The European society of Smith's day was, by contrast, a system of privilege; it was an aristocratic order. The Rise of Aristocracy England's aristocratic order did not rise by accident; it was imposed by a conqueror. En gland's social structure may be traced back to the battle of Hastings in 1066 and the Norman invasion of England. William of Normandy had a claim, of sorts, to the British throne, a claim which he validated by conquering the island. Having established his overlordship of England he parceled out pieces of the island to his fol lowers as payment for their services. In the words of historian Arthur Bryant, "William the Conqueror kept a fifth of the land for himself and gave one-quarter to the Church. The re mainder, save for an insignificant fraction, was given to 170 Norman and French followers nearly half to ten men."l In other words, 55 per cent of the territory of England was divided among 170 men, ten of whom got the lion's share, or 27 per cent among them, while 160 men got the rest. This redistribution of Eng land's territory was, of course, at the expense of the Anglo-Saxon residents who were dis placed to make room for the new owners. The new owners of England from William on down were the rulers of England; ownership was the complement of their rulership, and the wealth they accumulated sprang from their power and their feudal privileges and dues.

Norman overlordship was a system of privi lege. That is to say, the Norman rulers did not obtain their wealth by satisfying consumer de mand. Under the system of liberty, by contrast, where the economic arrangements are free market or capitalistic, the only way to make money is to please the customers. Under the various systems of privilege you make money by pleasing the politicians, those who hold power. Either that, or you wield power your self. This was a fine system-from the Norman viewpoint; but the Anglo-Saxon reduced to serfdom viewed the matter quite differently. It was obvious to the serf and the peasant that the reason why they had so little land was because the Normans had so much and, because wealth flowed from holdings of land, the Anglo Saxons reasoned correctly that they were poor because the Normans were rich! It is always so under a system of privilege, where those who wield the political power use that power to enrich themselves economically, at the expense of other people. It makes little difference whether the outward trappings of privilege are monarchical, or democratic, or bear the ear marks of 1984,. in a system of privilege, poUt ical power is a means of obtaining economic advantage.