Thursday, July 25, 2013

Inequality is life

Obama: Inequality is morally wrong

 

President Obama, never my favorite person, just leaves me shaking my head with wonder.

Where did we find this guy?

Look, I think somebody needs to explain the realities of life to him (not that I expect it to happen).

When one speaks of  “equality” in the political/historical sense, we are not talking about equality of outcomes. We are not talking about everyone having the same as everyone else, or even anything approximating equality of what we may or may not possess.

No. what we are – or should be – talking about is equality before the law; with government treating us all equally and not showing favoritism toward any individual or group (or the flip side, persecuting or discriminating against any individual or group). However, it seems that concept has been lost in transition between generations somewhere … or maybe it was in translation.

Granted, the generations that came before us were not perfect, nor were they omniscient or omnipotent. Like us, they were flawed individuals who strove to make a more perfect union. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell people like President Obama and other progressives, that “union” does not mean people are to be shaped with a cookie-cutter to be exactly the same.

Equivalence of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity, or – even more importantly – equality before the law.

As the President said in his speech this week, many people are being conditioned to believe: Inequality is wrong.

At first glance, it is hard to argue that “inequality” is wrong, but we have to define what is not being equal. If we are talking about economic outcome, then we are talking about something that is not the Provence of any government.

People are different. Individuals are essentially unique and therefore implicitly and explicitly INEQUAL. Sorry, but it isn’t going to happen. You can not use government to make everyone equal in life … it is impossible.

But our President is decrying the inequality of economic conditions and pledging to use the powers of government to correct this perceived problem … and if Congress doesn’t cooperate, he plans to do it by executive fiat.

If this doesn’t scare you, then you don’t understand that freedom isn’t free, liberty comes at a price and that if you want either then you have to accept that some people are just going to be different.

But no, we can’t have that. We have to resent all that others have.

That is beginning to scare me. I see far too many people, the President included, saying this group is wrong and that group is wrong and it is the federal government’s job to correct all that they define as evil, or wrong or an injustice.

We have lost our way, and unfortunately, the more I look at it, the more it seems that Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was politically prophetic.

 

This however is so very true:

Life is like a cup of coffee

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