Liberte, fraternite, et egalite: this was the rallying cry of the French Revolution. Translated, of course, to liberty, brotherhood, and equality. Mighty interesting, as the forces of liberty and equality are always tugging against each other in the modern day.

John Gerring, political scientist at Boston University, argued that the one ideology that has consistently prevailed in the Democratic party throughout its history has been the yearn for equality. Earlier, they nobly strove to achieve equal rights and an equality of opportunity for Americans. Unfortunately, in the sixties and seventies, the Democrats turned away from an equality of opportunity and have tried to bring about an equality of outcome through a redistributive welfare state.

Lefties have changed their point of view from equality under the law. Now, because inequality still exists despite the widespread equal treatment laws, they assert that the system itself must be corrupt in some way. We no longer hear about individual racism and sexism, it’s racism and sexism on an institutional level. And how does one fix that? Change the institutions, change “the system,” and redistribute, redistribute, redistribute.

Indeed, the solution that progressives propose is to change the laws so that there’s no longer equality, there is inequality. Witness, for example, affirmative action laws, title IX laws, and sexual harassment laws.

The French must be thanked for creating such a catchy slogan. One Frenchman, in particular, warned us long ago against this inevitability, even though we didn’t heed his warning. Alexis de Tocqueville, someone who had seen the devastation wrought by the French revolution and the incredible success brought on by the American one, wrote about the dangers that a desire for equality would ignite in the souls of free men.

“For the principle of equality begets two tendencies: the one leads men straight to independence and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road to servitude.

“As the conditions of men become equal among a people, individuals seem of less and society of greater importance; or rather every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd.

“When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity… This never dying, ever kindling hatred which sets a democratic people against the smallest privileges is peculiarly favorable to the gradual concentration of all political rights in the hands of the representative of the state alone.”

De Tocqueville is absolutely not an advocate of inequality, but his master work serves to warn us of the constant, unabated, and unrestrained lust for equality. Equality is a natural instinct of free men, yet can be a destructive and degrading influence if left unchecked.

Overt or not, the underlying philosophy of contemporary politics is a fierce battle between John Stuart Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Mill, while perhaps best known for his development of utilitarianism as an ethical system, was politically a classical liberal, a fierce defender of liberty. His seminal work On Liberty is a must-read for those interested in intellectual history.

Rousseau, on the other hand, formulated the idea of a "general will," and thought that a nation should be governed according to these principles. This has proven disastrous throughout history, as individuals have fancied themselves to be the supreme arbiters of the "general will" (Hitler, Mussolini, for example).

Our nation's founding wasn't based on Mill (Mill was a mid-19th c. writer, coming well after the U.S.' beginning). Indeed, individual liberty wasn't as fierce of a strain in Revolutionary America. They desired collective liberties as laid out in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights are all based around the phrase "Congress shall make no law..." This clearly was a way for states to keep their own autonomy from the central authority rather than preserving individuals' liberty. Indeed, in spite of the first amendment, many states had their own official religions.

We've evolved, however. Individual rights have become more and more important to our national character and our livelihoods. Indeed, our respect for individuality and responsibility are what set us apart from the trending-socialist Old Europe. Alexis de Tocqueville, touring America in the 1820s, saw our unique national character and wrote (in his absolute must-read Democracy in America) that he had high hopes for our relatively new republic.

"It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other...

It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated."

De Tocqueville clearly saw the direction our nation was headed in. He saw, even in our early days, our fierce love of liberty, and recognized that our nation would endure through struggle. He saw that our large liberties were by and large secured in the nature of our government and the nature of our people. He knew that the danger laid in the day-to-day meddling in minor affairs that our government is capable of.

Over the weekend I had a sojourn to Philadelphia to play a show with my rock band. I'd been there before, but never really as a tourist, so I decided I wanted to sample the local fare.

 

 

 

My Philly experience was good, America-loving, and cheesesteak-loving. Good job, Philly.

Great strides are constantly being made in biology and genetics that further clarify the everpresent discussion of what makes a man: nature or nurture? Is man born with personality traits primarily ingrained or is it the life experience that shapes who we are?

Increasingly, we learn that it's both. The genes that we're born with are not written in stone, just a way of predisposing us to certain things. For example, there's a gene that is related to addictive behaviors. Just because you have this gene, it doesn't mean you'll definitively be a smoker or a crack addict. It may, however mean you have a higher likelihood of indulging in some of these behaviors. Same goes for creativity, diet, breast cancer, hell, they've even discovered a gene that predisposes someone to being a morning person or a night person!

Some of the most stark examples have been what are called "twin studies." Scientists will take twins that have been separated at birth for whatever reason (not unethically forcing them apart for the sake of science, but just studying what has resulted from natural circumstances), and study their evolving behaviors in personality. Shockingly, the twins will be very similar twenty years later despite the radically different lives they have lead.

It's exciting and interesting stuff. However, the further down this road we go, the more dangerous the implications for public policy and law. Does knowing these things change our outlook upon resource allotment in society? What shall we do about redistribution if people are simply predisposed to making mistakes in their lives?

John Rawls' theory of justice, one that leftist philosophers (and, subconsciously, many progressive politicians) wholeheartedly endorse, was once derisively termed "luck egalitarianism." If we have as much as half of our personality determined at birth, does the state have a duty to fix these things? Should we as a society order our legal and bureaucratic system around aiding those who have been dealt a bad hand in life? What if what we were to call life-losers can scientifically have a rationale for their lot in life? What about the converse? Are we not obliged to supply those with superior genes a basic safety net because they've been given everything at birth?

Simply put, even if all of these are scientific facts, the must be ignored in public policy. Despite the hard luck that people may be given by their genes, if we were to attempt to order society in a way that takes all of this into account we'd start to enter a dystopian warped future. Our society must treat people as if we operated with a tabula rasa. Otherwise, discrimination would absolutely become all too real in every sense of the word.

America is the land of opportunity. If we were to use any kind of genetic starting point as a reference for redistribution or judgment, it would cease to be so.

 This one great line has summed up the ethos of the comic book world for nearly fifty years. Good vs. Evil is nearly always represented by a socially conscious superhero and a self-interested supervillain. (Spoiler alert for below).

Tony Stark/Iron Man, the latest comic-turned-movie, is no exception. The hero in question is Tony Stark, Marvel's answer to Batman. He's rich, he's a genius, he's a playboy, and he has no natural superpowers, just brains and money that he parlays into a high-tech supersuit.

His antagonist is his business partner who, being jealous of Tony's success, desires to have him killed and to co-opt Tony's research for his own. The balance here is obvious: Tony's the responsible one.

The movie evolves with a vague anti-corporation bent. Stark Industries, implied to be one of the U.S. government's top military contractors, turns out to be illegally supplying terrorists around the world with some of its top tech. After discovering this, and the fact that his business partner is behind it, Tony announces a halt in military research develops his Iron Man suit to right these wrongs.

Tony's business partner follows his research and has his own scientists develop a similar suit. They inevitably clash, and Iron Man appears as the victor.

Unmistakably, the message from the movie is that the ruthless business capitalist is not to be trusted, yet it's okay to have such great power concentrated in the hands of a responsible do-gooder.

This is inherently anti-conservative. Milton Friedman, in discussing why the free market is far more preferable to government, says "only human kindness, not the much stronger and more dependable spur of self-interest" assures us of the government's competency. As conservatives, this is why we are wary of government, and this is why we should be wary of superheroes.

Progressives, of course, are enamored of government power, and just think that it should be in the right hands. They trust human kindness. Progressives would be far more likely to trust superheroes in the same way.

Marvel brought all this to light in a very interesting 2007 story arc called "Civil War." The fictional Congress passed the Superhuman Registration Act, making it compulsory for all superheroes to register with the government or be declared enemies of the state. Iron Man actually helmed the faction of heroes in support of the Act, while Captain America broke away and helped those who disagreed and rebelled.

If all of this were to happen in reality, I'd be heavily in favor of the registration act. Bruce Wayne (written by Frank Miller), in the 1986 seminal classic "The Dark Knight Returns," says "of course we're criminals. We're forced to be." In a storyline that perhaps partly inspired Civil War, Batman has been forced underground as the state has relied upon the government-friendly and sanctioned Superman.

An official state has been, for a long time, defined as an organization that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Unregulated superheroes obviously threaten this idea. If superheroes are, however, regulated by the state, serving as kinds of super-policemen, they become slightly more tolerable.

It is true that responsibility must accompany power. As conservatives, we distrust the concentration of power, be it in the government, in a corporation, or even in one individual's hands. Conservatives should be wary of superheroes for precisely this reason.

A national registration system for voting would quickly be repurposed and used for many other kinds of regulatory control. There is no shortage of proposals for national registration and control of citizens. Should the voter ID tempest in a teapot boil over, the tiny specter of voter fraud could thrust a mandatory national ID into the hands of law-abiding citizens.

The Constitution gives Congress power to regulate the elections that select its members and, to a lesser degree, the president. But Congress does not have to use that power to its fullest extent. States recognize their own interests in fair elections, and they should experiment among themselves with ways to secure elections while making sure the vote is available to all qualified people.