By Oleg Atbashian
Today I came across this quote:
“Freedom is the right to inequality.”
—Nikolai Berdyaev, a Russian Christian philosopher (1874–1948)
The quote was accompanied by an anonymous comment in Russian, which I’d like to translate here. It pretty much echoes my own thoughts, laid out in Shakedown Socialism.
People, by their nature, are not uniform. We are all different, and immediate equality among us can only be achieved by forcibly bringing us to the lowest common denominator.
- Equality between the rich and the poor can only be achieved by confiscating the riches.
- Equality between the strong and the weak can only be achieved by emasculating the strong.
- Equality between the smart and the stupid can only be achieved by casting intelligence as a defect.
Thus, a fully equitable society would be a society of the poor, the weak, and the stupid, held together by force.
Let’s not forget that the word “equality,” coming from a leftist, implies, first and foremost, material or economic equality. It is not the same as “equal rights,” but that distinction is never mentioned, as leftists thrive on this confusion in terms. If you accept equal rights, they want you also to automatically accept equal outcomes. On the flip-side, they want you to believe that those who repudiate the idea of equal outcomes also hate the idea of equal rights.
Now, how about an equal right to be unequal?
This conundrum explains why all leftist experiments, starting with the French Revolution, end up in self-destruction: their slogan “freedom and equality” is an oxymoron made of mutually exclusive propositions. Forced economic equality destroys freedom to make life choices, and freedom to make life choices destroys economic equality.
Attempts to reconcile freedom and equality by brute force destroy both freedom and equality, leaving such a society with nothing but the brute force of ruling elites.