radical egalitarianism

[Charshooter]

Somewhere between Thomas Jefferson and William Jefferson Clinton an influential segment of the intelligentsia lurched far to the ideological and political left. Thomas Jefferson certainly did not confuse rule of law ("all men are created equal") and hereditary reality. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote,

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents .... For experience proves, that the moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father to son." (Jefferson, 1813).

In the face of what experience proves, and in open antagonism to much of twentieth century science, a powerful strain of modern liberalism worships radical egalitarianism. Modern liberalism is attempting to enforce Lysenkoism throughout Western civilization. The travesty that is Lysenkoism ruined the science and economy of the Soviet Union. It is well known as an example of the folly of attempting to repeal truth in the service of ideology (Berg, 1988; Medvedev, 1971; Soyfer, 1994). What is less often acknowledged is that the spirit of Lysenkoism is alive and well in the form of modern liberalism's enforcement of radical egalitarianism.

There and here the guiding theory is identical; it is socialist utopia based on egalitarianism, with what the behavioral scientists call environmental determinism. In 1948 Stalin actually outlawed genetics as being a western bourgeois construction that was incompatible with the truths of Marxist-Leninism. Like outlawing the heliocentric nature of the solar system. Hillary doesn't have quite that political clout, yet.

The theory that Stalin and Hillary share is that all those newborns, wheat plants for Uncle Joe, human babies for Mother Hillary, have identical potentials for growth and development. If some individuals don't do as well as others, it is because of their early experience.

 

[Doug.38PR]

Thomas Jefferson, nor any of his contemporaries in the America at the time, thought the phrase "all men are created equal" mean't egalitarianism.
19th century theologian and philosopher R.L. Dabney (who was the Edmund Burke of his time, challenging the egalitarians as they cropped up in America as Burke did the egalitarians of Europe) put it nicely this way:

They can quote the Declaration of Independence in the sense these radicals hold it: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are by nature equal and inalienably entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." "All just government is founded in the consent of the governed," etc., etc. It is true that this document, rationally interpreted, teaches something wholly different from the absurd equality of the radical, which demands for every member of society all the specific franchises which any member has. The wise men of 1776 knew that men are not naturally equal, in strength, talent, virtue, or ability; and that different orders of human beings naturally inherit very different sets of rights and franchises, according as they are qualified to enjoy and employ them for their own good and the good of the whole. But they meant to teach that in one very important respect all are naturally equal. This is the equality which Job recognized (ch. 31:15) as existing between him and his slave; the equality of a common origin, a common humanity and immortality. It is the equality of the golden rule. By this right, that human being whom the laws endow with the smallest franchises in society has the same kind of moral right to have that small franchise respected by his fellows, as the man who justly possesses the largest franchise. It is the equality,embodied in the great maxim of the British Constitution, "that before the law all are equal." This is true, although Britain is an aristocratic monarchy, and rights are distributed to the different orders very differently. Earl Derby has sundry franchises which the British peasant can no more possess than he can grasp the moon. Yet in the constitutional sense, the peasant and the earl are "equal before the law." If indicted for crime, each has the inalienable right to be tried by his peers. The same law which shields the earl's entailed estates, equally protects the peasant's colltage. As the men of 1776 were struggling to retain for America the rights of British freemen, which the king was unconstitutionally invading, their declaration must be construed as teaching this equality of the free British Constitution. So when they said that "taxation without representation" was intrinsically unjust, they never dreamed of teaching this maxim as to individual tax-payers. The free British Constitution, for which they were contending, had never done so. They asserted the maxim of the commonwealth. Some representation of the commonwealth taxed, through such order of the citizens as properly constitute the representative populus, is necessary to prevent taxation from becoming unjust.