“We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.”
The man who spoke the above words was president of the United States at the time he said them, and had had a long and distinguished career in public service in Washington, D.C. His words demonstrate just how incredibly stupid presidents can be, and because of his stupidity and policies, he has done more subsequent damage to the United States than perhaps any president in history, certainly among the top three.
Lyndon Johnson had one talent, and one talent only—he was extremely good, one of the best in history, at spending other people’s money. He had few equals in doing so.
How many trillions and trillions of dollars has America spent in the last 60 years on his “war on poverty”? And we still have a poverty rate in double digits. And how many Democrats in Congress are multi-gazillionaires? Equality. What a pack of hypocrites.
“If people are free, they will not be equal. If people are equal, they will not be free.” This is a maxim as old as the hills. Is it true? Well, it depends upon what is meant by both “freedom” and “equality,” and given Lyndon Johnson’s and the subsequent Democratic Party’s definition of both, there will be neither freedom nor equality for anybody except the power elite.
1. “Not just equality as a right.”
Freedom and equality have been the major themes of most political theorists throughout history, including in America. “Liberty, equality, brotherhood,” was a major mantra of the French Revolution, and hence modern man. There is a key sense in which, without equality before the law, there can be no true freedom. And every country should treat all its citizens equally before the law—“no man is above the law,” the two-faced Democrats reminded us repeatedly last year. We understand the principle in sports—both teams should play by the same rules, or there will be injustice and a warped outcome. Freedom would not have been truly allowed if one team—or in society’s case, one set of individuals—were given advantages others did not have.
America did have that problem in its beginning, but our laws are now written that everyone—theoretically—is “equal before the law.” I say, “theoretically,” because true legal equality will never happen anywhere weakness and evil in humanity exist. But it is the law in America. Where equality before the law substantially exists, freedom and ability become the determining factor in success. And therein lies the problem for modern Democrats.
And “equality before the law” is not what Lyndon Johnson meant, or the current Democratic Party, by “equality.”
2. “Equality as a result.”
The problem is that either President Johnson didn’t know, understand, or care that “equality as a result” is an absolute impossibility, theoretically and practically.
Human beings are simply not equal in many respects. We are not equal in talents, ability, intelligence, strength, drive, ambition—a thousand different ways. There is no way I could ever throw a baseball like Nolan Ryan, play basketball like Michael Jordan, or quarterback a football team like Tom Brady. I could never write music like Beethoven or play a guitar like Jimi Hendrix. I simply do not have that natural, God-given talent, and I am convinced humans are born with it, or at least a tendency toward it. I could practice 24 hours a day and never play basketball like Michael Jordan. Human beings are not, never have been, or never will be equal in that sense.
Elon Musk has the ability to make money that I can’t even dream of. His bank account and mine will never be equal as a result. Not if we believe in freedom. The only way Elon’s bank account will ever be equal to mine is if government forces Elon to give his money to me. The only way I could ever be equal to Michael Jordan on a basketball court is if you blindfolded him, broke both his legs, tied his hands behind his back, and didn’t let him go beyond midcourt. Then there might be “equality as a result” for Jordan and me on a basketball court. But what have you done to Jordan? You have, by force, limited his freedom. If the Democrats want “equality as a result” in anything, they’re going to have to restrict the freedom of countless people in many different areas.
“Equality as a result” is also impossible practically, or perhaps I should say, historically, because it has never happened. Communism loves to preach about “equality,” but the 20th century conclusively proved that the communist utopia of equality is a myth. It never happened anywhere it was tried, and the harder it was attempted, the more deaths that resulted. Joe Biden wanted “equity” in his administration, so he put every kind of freak, pervert, and gargoyle he could find into some useless government position. But he never got true equality, either, and all he did was rob people—and all Americans—of the benefits of having competent, intelligent, virtuous, free public servants.
But it’s been a refrain of the Democrats, and increasingly so, since Lyndon Johnson—equality, not just before the law, but “as a fact and as a result.” And it has been horribly destructive and divisive to American society.
I never resented Michael Jordan being on a basketball court for the Chicago Bulls; in fact, I reveled in watching him (he didn’t have the same talent for baseball). But I didn’t mind Jordan on the court because he earned it and deserved it. Giving people things they don’t deserve and haven’t earned, in the name of some fanciful “equality,” is unjust, detrimental to society and individuals, and creates resentment.
In other words, exactly what the Democratic Party is—deliberately—trying to create in America today.
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