The voices that are heard
It's a question of equality of outcome, not of opportunity.
Last week, at a friend of mine’s social media suggestion, I read a Front Page Magazine article by Daniel Greenfield called “Equity is the New Communism.” The story was another carrying the theme of the Left’s long march through the institutions, with the point being that they were trying to solidify their advances with the concept of equity, or the equality of outcome, rather than the long-standing American constitutional idea of equality of opportunity and trying to build a more perfect Union.
His argument concludes that, “Equity, as many have observed, is not equality, but equity, more importantly, is tyranny.” I don’t disagree, but there isn’t any way we can preserve equality of outcome without sacrificing opportunity?
Take next weekend’s Super Bowl with the Chiefs and Eagles: two teams that won their respective conferences by the twin virtues of having the best record in each of them during the regular season and beating back challenges from lesser rivals in the playoffs (despite what can be said about questionable calls by the referees in one case and the injuries to the losing team’s two quarterbacks in the other.) Now imagine what it would be like if we suddenly substituted for each team a group put together to “reflect our diverse society” - a nonbinary Latinx quarterback dodging a transgender black defensive end to throw a swing pass to a disabled single white woman being covered by a heavily tattooed and pierced fat-shamed Asian male. Yes, it’s a laughably extreme example but not as farfetched as one may think.
In previous times and places, equality was made to be nearly impossible thanks to hereditary systems which could only be uprooted with strife. One example would be brothers, born just two years apart: to the older goes a kingdom and all the rights and privileges of the Crown, while the younger sees his opportunity taken further from him with every child his older brother has. The only way for the younger brother to gain power would be a tragic act wiping out the entirety of his brother’s family, which would equate to a revolution.
On the other hand, our nation has been built and guided by both noble gentry and those who came from practically nothing. Its elected leaders, business barons, and trusted appointees aren’t exclusively one race or gender, nor do they all come from wealthy families. It’s a society which has attempted to perfect equality of opportunity since its beginning, sometimes in fits and starts and occasionally making a mad rush to set things right.
Yet there are people who want to go backwards, claiming that past discrimination eventually justifies future discrimination. That wasn’t the intent we were sold of any civil rights movement: it was all about equality of opportunity, or just giving certain couples the same rights others already had. Unfortunately, that promise has devolved into quotas, owing “reparations” for centuries of slavery that none of us have personally experienced as slaves or owners, or a forced acceptance or celebration of a lifestyle many of the faithful find deviant or sinful.
In a 1969 speech President Richard Nixon spoke of a “silent majority” who backed the anticommunist goal of the war in Vietnam. A decade later, the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, a group which expressed their Christian values and steered the conversation on social issues that weren’t often discussed in the political conversation. Fifty-odd years later, I’m not convined those who believe in traditional values aren’t still a moral and silent majority, a group simply afraid to speak out for fear of shaming and cancellation.
Instead of a “Bradley effect” on elections, I would contend there is one on social issues where people are loathe to say they’re against abortion, gay “marriage”, and other similar issues because they worry about the backlash. It’s the same on the question of equality vs. equity, although the Left tries its hardest to make the concepts sound the same. Don’t be fooled: there’s only one of those concepts we’ve tried for as a nation, and it ain’t equity.