Compulsory Equality

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Our Natural Rights are vast, and seemingly endless.  Government's role is not to interfere with those rights, but to create laws so that society can properly function.  Those laws, however, must provide the least interference possible, and the laws must be applied equally to everyone, regardless of race, color, sex, or anything else we want to throw in there.

The Founding Fathers believed in localism.  Only local government should administer local issues.  The larger government, central government, in our case the federal government, was not created to serve local interests.  The federal government was established to handle the issues that protect, preserve, and promote the union of States, and nothing more.  That's what limited government means, when espoused by conservatives.  The federal government is limited to only the authorities granted by the U.S. Constitution.  Our handling of our communities is our business, even if the bureaucrats think we are screwing up when compared to their dreams of how a utopian engineered society ought to operate.

In a System of Liberty, government, in general, exists to serve the people, not rule over the people.  During the time of America's infancy, the Founding Fathers were considered radicals.  Tyranny was the norm.  Their idea of not allowing government to rule over the people, but instead allowing the people to rule their own affairs at the local level while only allowing the central government to have the role of protector against foreign infiltration or invasion, was not a popular concept, and the authoritarians of the time were convinced that America would fail.  From their point of view, the citizens were like children who could not possibly know how to run their own affairs.  They believed government must dictate every part of society, establishing rules regarding one's daily activities, and interaction with others in the community.  Only a wise and all-knowing elite could properly serve the general will, and protect the people from themselves.

That kind of paternalism on the part of government was beginning to become rejected.

The era that enjoyed the presence of people like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington was one of upheaval, rebellion, and a search for something better than the oppressive nature of government over much of the previous 800 years.  The fall of the Roman Republic less than a generation prior to the birth of Christ had led to an empirical system that lingered in most of Europe long after the fall of Rome as an empire.  In other parts of the region the tyrannical rule of Islam infected the periphery, often knocking on the door of Europe with its fusion of religion and government as an overpowering totalitarian system that would rather slaughter anyone who refused to agree with their philosophies.  Some believed that the authoritarian rule of kings and popes were necessary to hold off the Muslim hordes, and others figured the people couldn't take care of themselves anyway, so the authoritarian European regimes remained in place for the sake of peace and safety.

To the north, where the "barbarians" resided, a different system was emerging.  The Saxon System was based on the idea that nobody is above the law, not even a king.  Government, believed the Saxons, exists to serve the people, and must operate by the consent of the people in order to preserve the freedoms of the citizenry.  The Rights of the People were considered to be naturally theirs, and government only existed to secure (keep them in their place as possessions of the people) those rights, not protect and guarantee them.  Government, after all, was the greatest threat to those rights, and must be restrained to only administering the necessary and proper laws to ensure the proper internal order and prosperity of the society.

The writings of John Locke expressed that government was obliged to serve the people in a moral and beneficial manner, while restraining itself from the natural tendency to become paternal.

John Locke's book, Two Treatises of Government, was a work that sought to justify the political rebellion against tyranny that was emerging in his time.  Locke stood in opposition of the absolutist authoritarian arguments being presented by those seeking to hold on to the norm of tyrannical government systems.  He denounced tyranny, favoring representative government based on a rule of law with a foundation firmly planted in Natural Law and the existence of a social contract (written constitution).

Locke explained in his book that the greatest danger of liberty and Natural Rights is government, therefore, if government violates Natural Law and attempts to enslave the people through control and authoritarian rule, the people have the legitimate right to rebel so as to alter or abolish that government.

Like John Locke, the Englishman's contemporary, Algernon Sidney, not only recognized the potentially tyrannical nature of government, but explained that if the overall culture is not based upon a sense of moral values, they are not capable of defending and maintaining their liberty.

Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted. -- Algernon Sidney

The writings of John Locke, and his fellow political thinkers who championed the Saxon System of governance, influenced people like Benjamin Franklin, inspired Thomas Paine's decision to write Common Sense so as to invigorate revolution, fired up people like George Mason, and educated patriots like James Madison who was still in a learning curve during the approach of the Constitutional Convention.

All of the words of these people guided Thomas Jefferson's hand directly and indirectly as he penned the words of the Declaration of Independence.  The language of our founding documents was carefully crafted.  The message was clear.

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Jefferson's now iconic phrase was a slight adjustment to Locke's "Life, Liberty, and Property."  

The patriots who were birthing a new country in the New World recognized the importance of the writings of the various political philosophers who rejected the authoritarianism practiced in Europe.  They took to heart the words of important documents like the Magna Carta and the English Declaration of Rights, and they embraced the cries of those who launched the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, as well as the cries of their own countrymen in the Colonies as King George continued to tighten his iron grip on them while ignoring the lessons of the Saxons during British History.  The American Founders understood that Natural Rights are the possessions of the governed, and it was government's role not to guarantee those rights, or to protect those rights, but to secure them so that the people maintained possession of their rights.

If government is the greatest threat against our Natural Rights, why would we wish for them to protect or guarantee our rights?

If government becomes the protector and guarantor of our rights, they then take on a parental nature that Locke warns against in the first pages of his book.  If government begins to exhibit a parental nature, and implement compulsory equality upon its citizens, the government has ceased to recognize our unique individualism, and will begin to demand a collective attitude which forces the definition of equality away from the Creator's definition to that of Karl Marx's communist definition.

When I was a child I constantly saw signs in businesses that read, "We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone."

For any reason.

That is the individual prerogative of a business owner.  It's his business, and he is entitled to run his business any way he wants.  The court of public opinion expressed through consumerism, not some political bureaucrat, should be who decides if his business will survive, or not.

As I like to tell people, we have the right to live, we have the right to buy a home in the neighborhood we wish to live in, we have the right to pursue our own doctor without government meddling, and we have the right to be ignorant jerks if that is what we want to be.  We have the right to be correct, or wrong.  And even if we are wrong, it is our right to believe we are not wrong.

Sometimes, we interfere with each other.  We wrong each other.  We crash into each other in intersections, or we disagree over parking spaces.  We break the reasonable natural laws which  govern a society, so in order to maintain order, government, through a legislature, pens laws so our society can run more efficiently.  The establish rules of the road and stop lights so we are less likely to crash into each other.  They establish laws requiring us to park inside the lines.  If we break any of our laws, there are consequences.  The consequences exist so as to discourage behavior that goes against the rules of a society.

Our laws are largely based on biblical principles.  It is against the law to steal or murder.  While there are no laws against lying casually, deception on a grand scale, while doing business, or under oath carries with them their own penalties.  We are expected to be fair with each other, and we expect government to treat us all equally under the law based on the godly definition of equality.  God's definition of equality is simple.  We are born as equals, and God seeks our worship and love equally.  He desires that each of us recognize His Love, His Grace, and seek Him out.  We are free to equally pursue the life we desire, and government agrees to interfere as little as possible, and only where necessary.

Equality is not supposed to extend to results.  Each of us are individuals.  We have talents, desires, and opportunities that are all unique to our particular personalities and lives.  We have different likes and urges, and we live in different conditions sometimes due to our preferences, and sometimes due to the reality of our situation.  He have a choice to accept where we are, or change that situation, and government is not supposed to treat us unequally in that respect.  In other words, our representatives are not supposed to make any laws that directly gives preference to any group of individuals for any reason whatsoever.

That does not mean, however, that laws are supposed to be made that in any manner that interferes with how we interact with each other, either.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

We do not have a right to be happy.  Government does not possess any obligation to make us happy, or to ensure our happiness.  We do, however, have the right to pursue happiness.

If I love to bake cakes, and I have a desire to bake cakes for a living, then I can open a business baking cakes.  I have a right to pursue such an endeavor.  But, let's just say I only like chocolate cake, and that is the kind of cake I prefer to bake.  So, figuring there are more folks out there that are just like me, I open a place where I offer only Chocolate Cake.  Am I discriminating against people who don't like chocolate?

The market will determine if only baking chocolate cakes will spell success, or not.

As a consumer, I also have the right to pursue eating the cake I desire.  Let's say my favorite cake is white cake with strawberries mixed into the batter.  But I come across the "Chocolate Cake Only" cake shop, and I am disappointed.  They don't make the kind of cake I want.

If I don't like chocolate, and I want to make sure the baker makes the kind of cake I want, should I go to the courts so that I may legally force the "Chocolate Cake Only" shop to make the kind of cake I like?

Remember, I don't have a right to be happy, what I have is a right to pursue my happiness. Therefore, it is not my place to use the force of law to compel the chocolate cake baker to make a white cake with strawberries mixed into the batter.  It is my own responsibility to thank the chocolate cake baker for considering my request, and then go find a baker who bakes the kind of cakes I prefer.  It is not government's job to force a baker through a judicial decision to make cakes other than chocolate to satisfy my fancy.

Government can't use legislation for that kind of compulsory equality, either.  How ridiculous would it be for government to pass a law forcing all bakers to make, in addition to their specialty, white cakes with strawberries mixed into the batter, in order to satisfy my demand?  It should be their own choice on how they run their own private business.  Government is not supposed to discriminate by making laws that gives preferential treatment to any particular group - such as making laws favoring those who eat chocolate cake, or favoring those who like white cake with strawberries mixed into the batter.

What if the "Chocolate Cake Only" shop is having trouble surviving because people are just not into a limited menu?  Should government bail out the chocolate cake only shop?  Or should a law be passed providing government paid-for subsidies to chocolate cake only shops in order to ensure they have a chance to compete against the other bakers, while denying such help to the other shops because they aren't chocolate-only places of business?

If government starts dictating through law how our culture should define marriage, or force a church to carry out marriages the pastor and congregation does not agree with, or if a person must serve a person as a business owner no matter who they are even if they are able to receive the service they desire elsewhere, or if government begins to pass laws dictating our speech or thoughts, that's not freedom.  That's the paternal nature of government that Locke warned us about.

If government says, "but those laws are necessary so that we can all be equal," that's compulsory equality of results, and it is a collective mindset that rejects individualism.

I have a right to disagree with government.  I have a right to agree or disagree with the cultural shifts we are experiencing in our society.  I have the right to be a jerk if I so desire.  My choices will then determine the kind of life I have.  I will succeed, or I won't.  Then, without government interference, it will be my decision on if I need to alter my beliefs, or change my way of doing things.

If I don't like chocolate cake, I have the right to pursue a baker that bakes white cake with strawberries mixed into the batter, I don't have a right to force a chocolate cake baker to make the cake I want.

If I don't like guns, I have the right to not buy one, but I don't have a right to force by law that nobody else can own one.

If I don't like the spicy programming of some premium channel, I have the right not to order that service, but I do not have the right to disallow anyone from accessing such programming.

If I do like spicy programming, I have the right to order that service, but I do not have the right to force everyone else to also have that programming.

If I believe in a certain type of way of raising my children, I should be able to choose how to do that without government interference.  If I want, I have the right to teach my children Creationism, that humanity has been on this planet about six thousand years, and Adam named the dinosaurs, if I so desire.  I have the right to train my children up myself through homeschooling, or put them in a private school.  If I choose to place my children in public school, but the school has a program that goes against my desires as a parent, such as sex education, then it is my right to opt my child of such a program.

At no point should government make it compulsory that I participate in their political narrative, or their social agenda.

It is not liberty when government decides it is their job to force into place equality of outcome, equality of condition, or equality of results.  We are unique.  We will land differently.  Not all of us land on our feet, and that's okay.  That is what liberty and a free market is all about.

There will be those who succeed.  There will be those who do not.  It is our job to change those results, not the government's.  As the old saying goes, failure is how we learn to win.  We should be able to go through that process with as little government interference as possible.

I have a right to pursue my happiness.  I do not have a right to happiness, or for my happiness to be guaranteed by government.  The pursuit is my journey, and my journey alone.  Government's role is to simply not act as an obstacle through tyrannical laws or preferentially-based regulations as I navigate my own journey.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary