The Cure for What Ails America Is Equality Properly Understood

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My fellow Americans, show me a “house divided” problem, where “We, the People” are losing ground, where we are failing — and not for want of dollars — and I’ll show you a violation of equality properly understood and constitutionally pursued.

Understanding what equality means and doesn’t mean, and coloring within constitutional lines, is not the answer to all our nation’s challenges, just most of them.

The men and women who lead what I call the “brother’s keeper” vanguard are birthing an idea of equality wrongly understood and unconstitutionally, illiberally pursued. It’s a notion that embraces all of equality’s passionate downsides.

What should we expect to come of it? A Disunited States of America characterized by a leveling equality and its logical fruits of servitude, barbarism, poverty, and misery. This is not progress but regress.

It is not what rank-and-file Democrats, adjacent liberals, conservative Democrats, and independents think they are voting for, but sadly, it’s what they’re going to get until we wake up to the woke.

Fortunately, there is another path open to us, one where equality shows its best self.

It is a social state, where equality and liberty are not foes but family and where equality for all means liberty for all.

A place where “We, the People” are citizens and not subjects kept by our “brother’s keepers.”

A private and public life that pursues individual and collective happiness without coercion. A “shining city on the hill” whose products are freedom, enlightenment, and prosperity, and not despotism, ignorance, and poverty.

Let’s all come together — independents, Democrats, and Republicans — and save this experiment in self-government of ours by getting behind this simple, self-evident idea that has been the cause of American exceptionalism.

We need to get our American mojo back and equality properly understood and constitutional pursued is how to do it. It works for everybody.

But the rub is in “properly understood.” Comprehending that part is crucial. Sadly, it’s easier to get equality wrong than right. Fortunately, getting equality right is not as hard as it may sound. In fact, it’s quite simple.

It’s just that we’ve lost sight of how simple it really is.

It begins with reacquainting ourselves with the Declaration of Independence’s understanding of equality. That understanding stands in harsh judgment of what is considered “equality” in the marketplace today — and allowed by our silence to stand as gospel.

In effect, the Declaration was our press release announcing a “new order for the ages” on July 4, 1776. It took a little over a decade to produce its initial public offering — the Constitution of the United States — which offered to the American people and the watching world “a republic, if you can keep it.”

Our Declaration’s equality principle overturned the premodern exchange table that valued and ran on human inequality. Our Declaration called out the Old World as obsolete and changed the course of human history. That’s something to be proud of.

But it’s only part of the recipe. Equality comes with a birthright to freedom — to live a life of individual and political self-government.

Equality is humanity’s title to be its own keeper, not one’s brother’s. “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,” Jefferson wrote, “nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” In truth, each of us is born not to be a master or a slave but rather a self-governing citizen. That’s a self-evident, unalienable truth.

Notice here that equality and liberty, rather than being at odds with each other, are really joined at the hip. It isn’t either-or. It’s both-and. Liberty at scale is derivative of equality at scale. Understand this: It is only because all are created equal that all are free.

Actual self-government may be difficult, but these concepts are not. Or they don’t need to be.

Equality, properly understood, is the unum that allows for and directs the pursuit of a genuine pluribus. This is how a genuinely diverse society can survive and thrive.

Equality is not a privilege and natural liberty is unalienable. Equality and liberty cannot legitimately be given, sold, or taken away.

If you have been dispossessed of your equality and your liberty, you have been wronged. If you’ve purposely given up your birthright, you have wronged yourself. You have chosen to be less than your created intention.

Now, pay close attention to what the Declaration of Independence does not say about equality.

It doesn’t say everyone is equal under every circumstance and across the board.

Equality properly understood recognizes and respects the obvious ways that we are not equal.

We are not equal in height. Basketball is not for everyone. We are not equal in looks. Modeling is not for everyone. We are not equal when it comes to intelligence. MENSA membership is not for everyone. We are not equal in strength or courage. Deadly, dangerous, and dirty work is not for everyone.

Equality, in short, is not homogeneous.

Here, then, is what “created equal” really means: Every human being is born for self-government, politically and personally. Equality extends the franchise of political liberty and its free pursuits to the human family. That’s it. And, it turns out, that’s a pretty big, new-order-of-the-ages deal.

In other words, equality properly understood is not at odds with excellence and human flourishing.

Equality wrongly understood, and unbound from constitutional limits, is the deadly enemy of those things. Alongside natural equality, there are natural inequalities. I’ve already mentioned a few of them. Not everyone can be Kobe Bryant, or Steve Jobs, or Eddie Van Halen, or Bella Hadid, or … name your role model.

This is a notion of national self that the American people still want and desperately need. And the good news is, it’s within our reach to give it to ourselves.

“We, the People” deserve a two-party system, policies, and civic education that prepares our present citizens for freedom, enlightenment, and prosperity. We need a system with an independent check that keeps itself within the sane lane. A system where the partisan differences between us are ones of degree and not differences of kind.

Equality properly understood and constitutionally pursued is the prescription to what ails “We, the People.”

Guy Shepherd is founder and editor of Planned Man.

This article was originally published by RealClearWire and made available via RealClearWire.