Protesters insist something be done to right inequality and they say the solution needs to happen with government intervention to level the economic playing field. The rich must pay their fair share. However, the facts are that the 1% pay 40% of federal income taxes and the bottom 50%, in some years, have paid nothing. Yet, the rich must be made to pay more.
This argument may be appealing on the surface but Western Society, especially American society has never been about equality, except the equality under the law granted by the Constitution. The revolution that took place in America was about freedom and liberty. It also guaranteed that men would never be equal.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the famous line, about all men being created equal he was referring to equality under constitutional law and not equality of expectations or rewards. The word "equal" doesn't appear until the 14th page of the Constitution. Jefferson was referring to an ideal.
In a letter to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson made it clear that he believed nature had blessed society with a precious gift, a natural aristocracy of virtue and talents to govern it. In his autobiography, a half decade before his death in 1826, he restated this idea of the aristocracy of virtue and talent which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society.
The revolutions of "equality" were the French Revolution (egalite), The Bolshevik Revolution, Mao's Revolution of '49, Castro's Revolution of '59, and Pol Pot's Revolution of 1975.
This was the Big Lie, of course, because what was supposed to be a liberation of oppression was in fact mass murder of the old ruling class and a rise of a new ruling class which was more barbaric and tyrannical than the regimes they replaced. Power to the people ends up as power to the party and its dictator. The most egalitarian society of the 20th Century was Mao's China and that regime managed to murder more of its own that Lenin and Stalin managed to do.
With freedom comes inequality. Gifts and talents are not distributed equally among men. Children come from various backgrounds. Not everyone has the same drive or ambition. In a society that rewards industry, and drive, and sacrifice and natural talent, there will always be those who rise above the conditions of others.
Political regimes that espouse equality for all are really after equality for all except the ruling class, which is really only after power. We will right the unfairness of society by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor, but first...you must give us power.
This generation will be worse off than the last but it's not because of any radical shift in political ideology. There are economic factors at work like the shifting of native jobs to overseas countries where goods can be made cheaper and profits can be maximized. The politicians who cater to these corporations continue to dance with those who brung 'em.
The current crop of Wall Street occupiers, et al. are resentful, envious, and greedy. Their lots may be inferior but it's not because of the absence of equality as they understand it. It is because of their inability or unwillingness to work within a system for change. A system which guarantees the very freedoms and opportunities that allow them to enact their misguided kinderspiel.
Give us equality, but first give us power...I don't think so.
The clash between left and right is over the battle between equality and freedom. The left is willing to limit freedom to gain more equality whereas those on the right see freedom as paramount, and are willing to tolerate some inequality as natural and unavoidable. Unfortunately, the left has lost the original meaning of equality as equal before the law, and is looking to make up for all sorts of natural inequalities, compensating and stacking the deck to try and achieve their goal of "social justice."
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