This post just kind of popped into my head this afternoon after some rather hefty reading. There is an absolutely immense misunderstanding of the concept of equality, and it infects every level of our society down to the educational cartoons for preschoolers, or reaching as high as the summit of world political power.
Equality in humans categorically and completely does not exist. Nor can it ever exist. It is an utter impossibility short of every single human being being an identical clone of every other, with identical experiences and memories. In short, impossible.
Humans are not equally tall, or equally beautiful, equally good or equally evil. They do not possess the same intelligence, the same ambitions, the same passions or the same desires. They do not have the same wants, the same memories, or the same experiences.
This has created two concepts that should be mutually exclusive. The “special snowflake” syndrome, and the myth that equality is not only possible, but desirable too. The SJW will spout some boilerplate about diversity and everyone being special, and then relate it to absolute equality. Consider a catchphrase in the “body positive” movement. “All bodies are beautiful.”
No. They aren’t. The implication is that if a woman is skinny, obese, tall, short, curvy or otherwise, she is equally attractive as every other woman. Reduced to a logical construct, they are saying “difference = same.” It is nonsense. Word salad. It means absolutely nothing, save for an intense desire for people to feel equal when they are not equal, and for politeness to be determined by how much you go along with their delusions.
SJWs are obsessed with this contradiction. It infects every level of their thinking. Yes, they may acknowledge indirectly, people are different. But if you say this out loud you are a racist/sexist/whatever. Or if you imply that the differences are anything but superficial, you are rude. Impolite. Politically incorrect.
It is ridiculous, and it stems from a misinterpretation (probably deliberate on the part of outright Marxists) of two concepts that are fundamental to Western civilization: equality before the law and equality before God. Yes, like it or not, Social Justice is like a Christian heresy, stripped of God, stripped of the divine, and shaped into an ugly, evil parody.
Let’s look at the Declaration of Independence for a moment:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Did the founders mean that all men are the same? That “all bodies are beautiful”, metaphorically speaking? No. The context of this was within an implied legal framework of basic rights. All men have equal rights granted by God, and a government is unjust if it seeks to deprive a man of these God-given rights. Among these rights are life (I’m not allowed to murder you), liberty (I’m not allowed to compel you by force to do my bidding), and the pursuit of happiness (you can try to find it – whether or not you get it is up to you).
This level of equality is both the basis for a legal framework limiting the power of government, and a reference to the fact that we all have souls; that God may judge them. God, being omniscient, can be an absolute neutral arbiter of justice, having all the facts, and thus may treat us with absolute equality. No man could ever do this, though justice is often better served by man at least making a passing attempt at neutrality (hence the concept of justice being blind).
This has absolutely no bearing on whether or not people are equally beautiful, smart, tall, short, talented, good, evil, or anything else. Equality of those types is not only impossible, any attempt to force them into being (still impossible to achieve) will, in turn, violate the God-given rights referenced in the Declaration of Independence.
Yet for some reason even admitting that you notice differences in people beyond the superficial (and even that, sometimes) is considered beyond the taboo, the most rude and evil a man can possibly be. “What, you don’t think I’m equally hot as the woman voted sexiest woman of the world? YOU SEXIST! ALL BODIES ARE BEAUTIFUL!”
This extends to wordplay all the time. Use of the word “retarded” has been banned by polite society even when used as a biological description. Indeed, the manuals themselves have been altered to remove the word. Instead we use a variety of stealth codewords for the same thing. He is “special” or “touched”. Yet those, too, have now absorbed the meaning of “retarded”. Shall we ban them, too? Or, perhaps, can we stop with this nonsense? We don’t have to pretend a retarded person is equally intelligent as a non-retarded person. It simply isn’t so.
None of this, and I reiterate in bold letters, none of this, has any implication whatsoever on your value before God, the value of your soul, the worth of your being. No man is fit to judge these things. Only God may do so. A retarded man is no more or less valuable before God than I am. This is because God knows all, God can judge us accordingly.
But beyond that, there is no equality. You, dear reader, may be smarter than I, or not. You may be better looking, or less attractive. You may be taller, shorter, more emotional or more rational. You may be stronger or weaker, faster or slower. We are not equal, and there isn’t a damn thing wrong with that. That is as it should be. That is how we were meant to be.
Pretending otherwise changes nothing about who we are, and the notion that we must pretend in order to be polite, and that impoliteness is worthy of political purging from society is pure evil. It is so evil that, so far as I know, widespread adoption of this behavior almost always results in heaps of dead bodies. Whenever people are not only encouraged to lie, both to themselves and to the world, but made to lie by force, it categorically must result in mass graves.
For how shall you compel the honest man to lie, if not through threat of death? And how is he supposed to believe you are sincere about dealing death if you have not dealt it before? After all, you have already demonstrated that you are a liar.
Beyond all this, SJWs expect you to finish the Orwellian conclusion that 2+2=5. That smart is stupid, that tall is short, and that all bodies are equally beautiful. Their whole heretical religion is based on the premise of seemingly-polite, nonsensical lies.
Thales, this may be the most accurate post you have ever presented. I will disagree on one point though. Everybody knows that 2+2 doesn’t equal 5 it equals 22.
RE: mass graves. There is a post from 21 Aug that should give all statists pause before going full socialist that everyone should read.
http://www.ammoland.com/2018/08/hundreds-of-millions-of-u-s-guns-are-unlicensed-and-untraceable/#axzz5OugXEw3n
It’s rumored that one of the reasons the Japanese didn’t invade the mainland is the fear there would be a rifle behind every tree. The wolves have even more teeth than they did then. Congrats statists you’ve overplayed you hand and a lot of people who wouldn’t have thought of owning a gun are now armed.
While I agree with the gist of your argument, I must disagree with the notion that owning a firearm is all that is required to be considered “armed.” Many years ago, Col Cooper pointed out that owning a musical instrument does not make you a musician, and gun ownership is a perfect parallel to that concept.
But even gun ownership (or public acknowledgement of same) is a big step for many, and we shouldn’t discourage steps in the correct direction, even if they are baby steps.
Most people (I hope) don’t just buy a gun and throw it in a drawer. They at least go out and shoot at old cans. While that doesn’t make you a gunslinger, it at least makes it hazardous for gun confiscators. Besides, remember that Tucson SWAT video? You had the Keystone cops climbing over each other to shoot a Marine vet who wasn’t shooting back. Imagine even a casual plinker who does. Many if not most cops wouldn’t get involved in a blatant confiscation scheme.
Even untrained people with a loaded firearm are dangerous, especially at close range. But many studies show that the average private owner is a better gun handler and better shot than law enforcement.
I saw an article a day or two ago (might have been linked on Instapundit) that stated the DNC had made a new rule: all committees had to have equal gender representation.
I found this HILARIOUS. Consider the following violations to current Progressive/Neo-Maoist/Social Marxist theology caused by this new rule:
1. Gender is apparently a ‘social construct.’ If that’s the case, how can you use gender to decide whether or not someone can serve on a committee? This is clearly sexist.
2. What about people who don’t identify with either gender? Are people who self identify as a handkerchief, a frisbee or a cosmic fart by definition expelled from DNC committees? This is multiphobic.
3. Currently, the SJW/Social Marxist/Progressive ‘canon’ identifies 76 distinct genders, each with their own invented pronoun. If gender representation on every committee must be equal, does this mean no committee can be formed with less than 76 members or a multiple thereof?
Ladies and Gents:
It is critically imperative that we, as humans, make every effort to upset, outrage, insult, defame, infuriate and shame SJWs/Neo-Maoists/etc at every turn in order to drive them into a rabid frenzy. Get them upset enough and they will all eventually have a stroke and expire. And the world will become a better place thereby.
Yes, it’s all quite ridiculous and deserving of our mockery…until you get to the core of the apple.
These absurdisms have a purposes. When coupled with the deafening denunciations and terror tactics the Left employs against those who reject them, they have a net effect of inducing people to accept clearly impossible contradictions of the realities they can see and hear — i.e., to reject the evidence of their senses in favor of “what the Party says.” It’s really a variation of this:
The Left cannot strap us to a rack and inflict physical torture on us…but never imagine that their aim falls short of that standard.
The modern left’s ‘idea of equality’ represents a fundamental misreading of the Christian notion of equality before God, and a fundamental misreading of the Enligtenment and proto-enlightenment notion of ‘equality before the law’ that is in may ways similar to the widespread 19th century misreadings (which are embedded in a Marxism stuck in 19th century categories like a fly in amber) of the Enlightenment’s ideas of progress and human nature: a combination of the misreading of progress as inevitable rather than possible, and the misreading of the idea of human nature as not inherently evil as a Rousseauian idea that human nature is perfectible.
Those who do not actually read theology, and who do not actually read enlightenment thought (or the Founders for that matter) are condemned to misunderstand and misinterpret them. And, of course, those who do not read history are condemned to absolutely fail to understand the context in which ideas are expressed or what words actually meant when written.
“…and the Pursuit of Happiness”
You could also write a post about contemporary misunderstandings of what the Founders meant by that.
Those equalities are believed in by the left, especially among the young, because they are considered less important than political agreement. They do not believe that those who disagree with them, of any race or religion, are at all equal. It is simply the substitution of one division for another. They are quite primitive and tribal about it. They say things about conservatives – and now, even some other liberals – that no one would ever say about another race, ethnicity, or religion.
Free people are not equal (economically), and (economically) equal people are not free.
Freedom will generate differences in income, because we’re different one person to another.
Lawrence W Reed (President Foundation Economic Education)
Here’s F. A. Hayek along lines similar to yours
“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time”
I would add the observation that the Left believes that treating people unequally in order to achieve equality is to be preferred to treating people equally and letting the chips fall where they may. This, says, Hayek is the fundamental difference between the Left (who value equality over liberty) and Conservatives (classical LIberals) who value freedom over equality.
My basic understanding of this leftist rubbish is that you logically must view leftists as murderers. First they murder the truth. Moving on from there, murdering YOU is a very small step. They usually get around to murdering each other after a while, because slaughtering sheep gets boring. Recall if you will, that the Bolsheviks and the Soviets often murdered people who were absolutely no threat to them. It’s how you keep mass herds of sheeple in line. Fear. When the Soviets stopped their mass murdering, they got soft and slid into being irrelevant. The leftists here are already irrelevant. Wanting to rise above all that, they will resort to murder, to at least get their way for a while. The Americans are going to wind up like the Jews in Germany, obediently reporting to the train station, if they can’t find their balls. The leftists already have the balls to do their murdering.
Americans, have never been ones to meekly board trains. When provoked Americans will come at you like Godzilla with a hangover. The problem with progressives is they live in an echo chamber. When they come outside they will be very surprised.
Agreed 169%.
When you shake the tail of the Dragon, it awakens in a truly foul mood.
Japan and Germany discovered that.
So did Saddam Hussein, AQ and ISIS.
The real beauty of America is when push comes to shove there always seems to be leaders who seem to rise from the ground to lead the fight against tyranny. Not just military types either.
The ultimate destination of the trains was never shown on the Departures board at the station.
How many Americans would gladly board if told there would be a nice hot complimentary Starbux and free Wi-Fi waiting for them at the final destination? Too many, I fear.
This is called evolution. The sheep will calmly board those trains leaving well armed wolves behind. Evolution in it’s most violent form is called war. That is what the left will reap when they come for the wolves.
Note to self.
You are starting to get as wordy as TSW. At this rate Thales won’t be able to get a word in edgewise.
Equality is a relationship whose terminal relata are measured by the mind (on some quantitative dimension and standard) to have the same quantity.
Our sorting things into categories makes use of equality. For example, the class of human beings, MAN, subsumes things that are measured to be equal. Thus all men are measured to be equally human. This, I think, is the essence of the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence.
Thus, from the Declaration of Independence, every man is equally human with equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which must be secured by the government, which is instituted solely for such a purpose.
So equality is a relationship that is useful to ensure categorical membership. And within government, equality is a required relationship to ensure uniform treatment of each human being with respect to the laws written to recognize and protect his rights.
Outside of mental categorical classification, of course, everything in existence is different. The mere fact that two things are two individual, distinct things makes them different.
Outside of government, every man has his own mind to measure things, and there are many ways he can sort the things out there to make them equal–e.g., redheads, brunettes, blondes–and the things sorted are equal in their categorical membership.
If you listen carefully to the progressive socialists/SJW’s you can hear the low hissing of the serpent.
From their leadership and main backers, yes.
But from the rank and file acolyte, you’ll hear the dull moan of someone who ate a lot of paint chips as a kid. 😉
The demand for equality of outcome and for redistribution is fundamentally whining that life is unfair. I did not go to med school because I did not want to work that hard and I am happy with the trade-off. But a lot of these whiny brats are not happy with any trade-off. They want to study social justice BS and take it easy but still get paid big bucks even though they have a big attitude and no particular skills. That isn’t how the world works.
Kurt Vonnegut did not intend “Harrison Bergeron” to be an instruction manual for the Left.
Thank you, you beat me to it. I was about to mention Harrison Bergeron. If you think it is a far fetched idea, we are already in a 1984 / Brave New World like reality and with the rewriting of history (also 1984) are headed Farenheit 451 as well. Harrison Bergeron is the next logical iteration.
Asians and Europeans are a standard deviation smarter than brown folks. Easy fix for that. Front lobotomy. Boom! The playing field has been leveled at minimum cost and inconvenience. If you find this absurd or far-fetched take today’s causes and headlines and send them back 10 to 20 years. We are rapidly headed towards this reality.
White farmers in South Africa can tell you much about leveling the playing field at gunpoint.
Thurgood Marshal, Sidney Poitier, Clarence Thomas, MLK, Michael Jordan these are just a few who put the lie to your assertion of brown inferiority. I could have made this list much longer and been more inclusive but these are the names that popped up first.
You should have stopped with the first paragraph because the second makes you look ignorant at best.
Sorry Michael, but Apex is more right than wrong. You’ve committed the logical fallacy of citing exceptions to a pattern — a strong pattern at that, one which has persisted for generations and seems likely to persist indefinitely — and claimed that therefore the pattern itself does not exist. That does not follow.
That the apostles of “equality” routinely attack those who cite multiply replicated statistical measurements as “racists” does not invalidate the statistics.
My viewpoint is based on a lifetime of living and working around blacks in the Detroit area and elsewhere. Based on that I have found that the problem seems mostly environmental (crappy schools, and home life). First Americans have the same disadvantage. As for our Latin, Indian, or Middle Eastern brethren I can’t say having moved from the city to a very rural area before the great migration started.
(This is actually a reply to Michael’s reply to me.)
Let’s stipulate — I don’t accept it for reasons we’ll get to later, but stipulate it strictly for discussion purposes — that “the problem [is] mostly environmental.” The statistics remain as they are. Moreover, if (the biggest little word in logic) all the environmental causes could be isolated accurately and corrected instantly, the consequent improvement would still take at least one full generation! Therefore, in present-time decision space, the statistics are determinative.
Now, as it happens, IQ measures, standardized test scores, graduation rates, and all the rest of the more or less relevant and reliable metrics are invariant — i.e., differences are within the limits of sampling error — regardless of school system or any other environmental factor. Moreover, a far more important metric, the propensity for interpersonal aggression and lawbreaking, also sets blacks apart from whites, again regardless of environmental factors. Study after study, whether conducted by public or private authorities, confirms this.
In other words, you pays your money and takes your chances.
Not going to question the results of the tests and agree with the quote.
My definition of environment include schools, culture and home life.
Let me try a historical example. In American history there were whites who didn’t want to send there kids to school. Usually this was because the kids were needed to help on the farm. This is not that different than black kids not wanting to be to white. Yes the circumstances are different but the results are the same. When you figure in drugs, alcohol and single parent homes you get a downward spiral on any test results. Add in government handouts and the loss of self worth thereby and you end up with aggressive males of the most aggressive species ever to walk the planet.
You are the reason we lose. Full stop. You are the POSTER child for the equality myth.
Francis P. already show you the absurdity of your logic. I won’t even countenance the mountain of evidence that exists vs. your ‘long list of examples.’
Haiti. Norway. Pick one.
I’ve not the time nor inclination for intellectually jousting with religious zealots. Diversity is a fanatical pathology like radical Islam. You are a disciple. You cannot be saved.
Are you sure there isn’t another way to look at it, Apex?
It is my understanding that a study was done in Germany on african children adopted as toddlers by German nordic couples. They had no connection anymore to their African roots and were raised just like any other german kids.
Per this study, their performance in school as they grew up and their success or lack thereof in the workforce as adults matched up exactly with the rest of the German populace on a statistical basis.
Ben Shapiro cited this study once.
Something to consider.
While I burn in hell contemplate this. This is America “If you want to be a winner you can be a winner. If you want to be a loser you can be a loser.”
Let’s look at Haiti a country run by corrupt politicians since independence. A shithole. Let’s try Sweden. A country run by corrupt elitists. Rape capitol of Europe and possibly the world. How about China under Mao. A hellhole of socialist terror against there own people. Or that other spot of Asian enlightenment North Korea. Get a night time picture of the Korean peninsula and tell me of Asian superiority. Even Zimbabwe has more light at night.
Here’s some superior white folk for you. Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Adolph.
What may appear as white superiority is just familiarization with Western Culture. Which is nothing to be ashamed of but at the same time it is really dumb to base that assumption on familiarity.
The point is what the individual does and how they are brought up not nature that matters, diversity be damned.
You can have millions of studies about people and what each and every one overlooks is people are individuals not groups. No rule or test will apply to all in a group. Even generalizations should be viewed with suspicion.
If by smarter you are talking IQ tests then your data is flawed from the outset. Those tests have been proven horribly inaccurate.
The purpose of forcing people to use 57 pronouns is not that they should “show respect” to the “non conforming” that is just the pretext. The purpose is to demoralize and despirit, to gratuitously demonstrate their powerlessness, to make them feel complicit in the lies and thus unable to make a moral judgement about anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless#Havel%27s_greengrocer
I’ve met many Command Sergeants Major who distinctly odd ideas about equality.
“who had distinctly”
Like this?
Naw, like Major Payne.
Seriously though, by the time I went in in 71 they weren’t allowed to call recruits maggots anymore. By the time my son went in in 2004 they had those damn red cards you held up if the Drill Sgt made you feel uncomfortable. I’m surprised Osama wasn’t able to kick all our asses single handedly after training rules like that.
Michel,
Yeah, things change with time. In my time they could still lay hands on you. TSW’s above video is very accurate.
TSW,
I think R. Lee is a Gunny in that pic. Command Sergeants Major were a breed that you avoided at all costs. Once crossing an open space I had an unfortunate encounter “Sgt H—! You’ve got a head so big that if you had a real thought it’d kill you!”
After all these years I still feel the love.
So you mean more like this?
TSW,
I talked to several men who served directly with Basil Plumley, yes a lot like that.
I noticed at the end of the video it showed a come on for the most psychotic Drill Sgt. in the movies. Once again R. Lee Ermey from FMJ wins the prize.
You might find this interesting from Tom Kratman.
http://www.everyjoe.com/2017/02/27/politics/whats-wrong-current-day-sergeants-major/#1
Michel,
Thanks. Though I do believe the military is screwed up, I remain optimistic they can fight and most likely better than we did. Unless of course Chaldeans are involved!
Just be happy we don’t have to face the modern equivalent of the Legions or the Spartans.
Since we wandered into things military. One of the dumbest exercises in modern politics is the effort at equal outcome in the military. Specifically women in combat. Even the rapid unloading of a helicopter under fire requires speed and musculature women don’t have. Imagine a 160 pound woman having to carry a 200lb man out of the engine room of a burning ship. Forget cannon cockers, tankers or infantry. There are plenty of combat roles for women. Button pusher to pilot. But full integration not possible if you want to maintain peak proficiency in the combat arms.
It’s a rather obvious and blatant effort to destroy the US Military as a functioning institution. Not just the egalitarian ‘ideal’ of having women serve in combat infantry, but imposing any kind of SJW-driven PC into the armed forces.
This is just another front in the progressive left’s long march thru America’s institutions, the aim of which is to annihilate them so that they can be replaced with what progressives want – instruments of total control and tyrannical power.