Freedom vs. Equality

My article on freedom and equality is up at The Federalist. A few snippets:

Modern politics is generally framed as a struggle between freedom and equality. But which is the greater end? Although both are important, in accepting either we’ve lowered our sights from the classical ideal of virtue. The modern mindset can be demonstrated by two examples: taxes and the minimum wage. Opponents of tax hikes often appeal to the right of individuals to keep the fruits of their own labor, while advocates argue the wealthy must “pay their fair share.”

The same applies to the minimum wage. Critics decry government criminalizing arrangements the parties involved have freely agreed to simply because it may not seem “fair” to an outsider, while supporters counter that everyone is entitled to a “living wage.” To be sure, freedom and equality are indispensable to our republic (although equality of opportunity as opposed to equality of outcome), but both fall short of the ideal of virtue.

America is losing its moral roots

For most of our history, political thought was rooted in values. But in recent years, emotion has replaced these roots. The effects of this change have been momentous.

First, it has diminished the importance of learning from the past. Why study our predecessors for insights into truth, virtue and wisdom when the heart provides these ideals? If something offends us it is wrong, and if it makes us feel good it is right. Hence the decline of value-oriented subjects such as history, ethics and logic, and the rise of emotion-oriented subjects such as women, minority, and transgender studies at our universities. Graduates are fluent in emotional mantra on oppression and inequality, but clueless on American history and moral ethics.

Do right and wrong exist?

Popular culture increasingly encourages the idea that belief in universal principles—fixed notions of good and evil, right and wrong, moral and immoral—prevents “progress” and promotes intolerance. We must be “open-minded,” we are told, and eschew such rigidity. Yet “openness,” or relativism, is a path to national suicide.

The closing of the left-wing mind

“…Letters that have an untrue basis (for example, ones that say there's no sign humans have caused climate change) do not get printed,” The Los Angeles Times proudly announced last year. The newspaper was not alone in expressing such sentiments. Other influential news outlets, such as BBC, have asserted the same. But what explains this close-mindedness?

In The Closing of the American Mind, Professor Allan Bloom describes how the idea of “openness”—relativism and subjectivism—renders the existence of, and hence the search for, moral and philosophical truths a fiction.