Читать книгу The Smart Culture - Robert L. Hayman Jr. - Страница 11

It is the central contradiction of American life: the absurd divorce between egalitarian ideals and the reality of relentless inequality. It has been with us from the outset, and revolution, civil war, and two national efforts at reconstruction have succeeded more in re-stating the contradiction than in resolving it. We began by declaring all men equal, and a century later guaranteed all persons the equal protection of the law, and after yet another century ensured the civil rights of all Americans—and still our social, economic, and political life is dominated by inequity. There are no castes in America, and yet—maddeningly, undeniably—there are.

The rationalizations have been with us from the outset as well. All men were equal, but, by nature, that principle did not extend to women, or men without property, or American Indians, or, of course, slaves. All persons were guaranteed equality under law but, in the nature of things, that pledge did not eradicate distinctions rooted in biology, and could not redress inequalities that were social, as opposed to legal. Civil rights are guaranteed all Americans, but, naturally, that secures only an equal opportunity to succeed, and cannot ensure equal outcomes. We are, formally, all equal, but we are, really, not equal at all: platitudes aside, there is no denying the natural order.

We do not deny it; on the contrary, we have made it the law. At the founding, Rousseau’s communitarian vision yielded to an individualism that exalted, above all, the right to amass very unequal shares of property; protecting the “unequal faculties of acquiring property” became “the first object of government.” Over two hundred years later, it still is. Economic liberty leads inexorably to social inequality, and that is natural, that is just. The laws of nature have thus become our rules of law: both represent the same order.

Some are, by nature, smarter; they should get, it is only natural, more. These are the myths of our creation, the essence of the smart culture.