(The Englishman) “may realize that (American) equality is not some tale about all men being equally tall or equally tricky; which we not only cannot believe but cannot believe in anybody believing. It is an absolute of morals by which all men have a value invariable and indestructible and a dignity as intangible as death.”
G. K. Chesterton
What I Saw In America
If Chesterton had lived to see what I’m seeing he would have to believe in men believing that all men are equally tall and equally tricky and equally intelligent and equally creative. The lie of egalitarianism is that all men and all peoples are equal in talent, skill and ability. It is the lie that all men, regardless of nurture, nature, and belief are the same. This lie leads to the elimination of all God given and God honoring distinctions.
The American belief in equality was never intended to be equivalent to this lie. For Pete’s sake the Declaration of Independence refers to Indians as “savages,” clearly something that would not have been said by those who were intending equality to mean a bland sameness. The American belief in equality is just what Chesterton noted combined with the belief that all men bore the imago Dei.
The equality of 21st century America is the equality of the French Revolution, the equality of the gulag, the equality of the sex change. It is the pursuit of the leveling all distinction, ability, and accomplishment. It is the pursuit of equality of both opportunity and outcome – a notion that is absurd even on its surface. If the West should ever go from flirting with this modern concept of egalitarianism to a full conjugal embrace of such a fantasy the result will be the equality of the damned.
