An utterly banal observation is that America is the first nation founded by philosophers. Franklin, pictured above, became famous for his wit and insight. Thomas Jefferson thought deeply about relationships of men and government as did his political rival John Adams. Many others just as thoughtful contributed to what the United States has in its founding document, the Declaration of Independence, and charter of the Constitution.
The Declaration begins by not only acknowledging the need to respect the opinion of God in what we are doing, but then goes on to base all rights of choice as coming from God. This is well before the laundry list of injustices of the British crown. Freedom coming from God, an actual, personal, and involved deity, is the founding principal and assumption of all that followed.
In my opinion, this is a basis of hope and optimism. We can become better than we are. The XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Amendments to the charter, the Constitution, are corrections of mistakes in the charter, not the founding document of the Declaration. They repealed slavery and recognized it as inconsistent with a freedom loving people or rights coming from God.
Now for the current day. John Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1971. I had the privilege of Professor Sorensen teaching our political theory class using this as well as Plato one semester. Leaving Plato aside, which is generally a way of excusing denying all individuals freedom, I will spend a minute with Professor Rawls who is responsible as the grandfather of the train of thought that has arrived at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI.
His theory is that everyone is entitled to being treated exactly the same way in all things regardless of what happens in reality around them. (This is a broad brush, so go with me here. He is more nuanced, but not in the essentials.) One over the world, we see universal healthcare, a basic income, and all housing and other needs being equally distributed. Any bad things need to be corrected so every individual is even with everyone else.
I could be smart aleck and point out that the Soviet Union tried that with, to say the least, uneven result. However, there are several questions which need to be answered before we get that deep. This week I will only ask one. For those who stick around, we’ll deal with the others over time.
This week – What is even? If a terrible car accident results in a child losing a hand, do all other children need to lose a hand because prostheses are not adequate to replace a natural one?
What about NBA ball players? That is a one in a million talent and genetic set. I certainly don’t have that talent or to play lead guitar in a rock band (too lazy, actually to practice that much), or paint masterpieces. Nor do most other people. Then there is laziness, what of people who won’t work? Can they jet all over the world if they want to?
The Rawls theory assumes that being denied everything we want is due to someone being unfair to us. He relied on a group getting together representing all times, genders, ages, racial and ethnic groups, and figures out what we should all have so no one is treated unfairly – because it could be you on the short end of the genetic stick or bad weather or a teacher or boss who doesn’t like you and gives you bad grades or fires you. (We won’t deal with the wormhole or obvious time paradoxes at this time.)
As you can see, what he is doing is trying to prevent bad things from happening because they might. What happens to our personal freedom to succeed or fail? I’m afraid that disappears. In horse racing, they try to even out the field by putting weights on the good horses. Is that fair? His intellectual descendants think so.
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