Maxim looks at "Societal Equality"

excerpts from the excellent new article article: "Dignity, Decency, Equality and Freedom", found here at www.maxim.org.nz, 25 October 2007.

...Take "equality" for example. It is true that "all men are created equal" in dignity; rich and poor, people of all races and creeds and social positions have an intrinsic and common human dignity they possess by virtue of being human. We want people to be "treated the same" before the law, to have a society where the poor are not shut out, and where we all have a sense that we share in a wider whole. Indeed, the concept we often label "equality" is closely related to the older concept of "equity"—the idea that we have a stake, and that we have a right to that stake, or as Edmund Burke said that we have "equal rights, but not to equal things." The poor man and the rich man might have unequal wealth, but they have an equal right to justice, a right to equality before the law, a right to equal treatment by virtue of their humanity...

...Signing up to equality without thought, critique, criticism and debate means signing up to a whole heap of unintended consequences too. People are not equal in talent, or in ability. Some people will earn more money than others, some will be academically minded, some practical, some people wise with their cash and others foolish. This is a fact of life, and we should not allow, as so often happens, the generous and good ideas of "fairness" and "equality" to be warped so as to obscure and attempt to hide this fundamental human truth. Competition and unfairness are a fact of life...

Click here to read the rest of the article.