Maybe Equality is Not the Answer

Freedom is alarming but equality is terrifying

Freedom is alarming. Freedom allows vast diversity. Freedom allows inequality. Freedom allows people to be lackluster or magnificent. Freedom allows for dishonesty, greed, and betrayal. But it also allows for generosity, loyalty, and truth telling.

Some modern equality fighters have distorted the valid concept of equality—meaning equality before God and the laws of justice—and set humanity on a quest for enforced sameness, wielding misguided laws as they go. Manufacturing false equality by way of legal mandate overrides people’s personal choices and revokes freedom. But taking people’s freedom does not make people inherently better or less flawed; they are simply (and temporarily) equal in some artificial sense, and that is all. They (we) are still the same flawed, potentially foolish people underneath a façade of equality.  

Equality mandates in any form (including wealth redistribution, race quotas, or participation trophies for everyone) do satisfy a rabid thirst for equality, but they don’t make people any better. Freedom, although it allows for failure and evil, tends to be the best way to make people better. People with freedom—and responsibility for how they use it—are free to make poor choices, and all people do. But people can, and most often do, learn from their misdeeds. And therefore, they become better, wiser, and more capable beings. Freedom allows for error, but it leads people to truth and competence. Allowing people to choose greatness or not to choose greatness is the essence of freedom.

Greatness is not dependent on sameness between people. People of all circumstances can and do achieve greatness. It tends to happen moment by moment, sometimes dramatically, sometimes unassumingly. Viktor Frankl achieved greatness by sharing his last scraps of bread in the concentration camp. My husband achieved greatness by showing my son how to put the twist tie back on the marshmallow bag last night instead of scolding him for heisting marshmallows in the first place. My neighbor achieves greatness as she lifts herself out of bed and takes a walk every morning to stay strong for her kids before facing another day of chemotherapy, baldness, and worry for her family.

Greatness in its purest form, is love. For those whose top priority is equality (like many politicians and activists), freedom is too alarming to risk. For those whose top priority is love (like God), freedom is essential. Love—the most powerful force in the cosmos, the catalyst for all the best things that ever occur, and the defining characteristic of true greatness—cannot be bestowed upon anyone. You cannot force love out of people or into people. You can love people, but people must choose to love. And therefore, they must have the freedom not to choose it.

If all things (character traits, tacos, Ferraris) were bestowed upon us in equal portions there would be no triumph in them, nor any significant appreciation for the things bestowed because the situation could not be otherwise. Therefore, despair and failure must be possible in order for us to fully experience joy and triumph. Equality initiatives attempt to negate the existence of opposites—and in so doing, negate the lessons they are meant to teach us.

The answer to the equality arguments barreling through society today is this: The goal is not equality. The goal is greatness, to whatever degree people are willing to choose it.

Read more on this topic in my book, The Invincible Family.

*This post is designated as a “Cookie.” My intent with a Cookie post is to give you a short, delicious nugget to gnaw on today. I hope I did!