Why are Democrats harping on “equity” between groups rather than “equality” between individuals? They are pushing Marxism. Democrats’ push for massive spending, redefining infrastructure, federalizing elections, dramatically raising taxes, ending First and Second Amendment rights, infusing society with illegal aliens, and “leveling” society is about transforming America into a Marxist paradise – at least for many.
Fundamentally, “equality” and “equity” are different. The first is an American constitutional value, found in the 5th and 14th Amendments, dedicated to assuring individual citizens are entitled to equal protection under the law, an equal chance to participate in society, from education and employment to security and prosperity. The second is a Marxist term, demanding mass transfer of wealth between groups, giving what is earned by one to another – by force.
The coercive force, of course, is government – a centralized, powerful federal government. This was not America’s founding idea – quite the reverse – which is why Marxists, an increasing clump within the Democrat Party, hate our Founders, want to delegitimize them, and take power.
To be clear, America’s Bill of Rights – modernized by the 13th, 14th, and 19th Amendments – empowers every individual citizen and acknowledges God-given rights, independent of race, sex, or any other difference. The Constitution does not promise material outcomes to groups.
Since individuals know what they want, how hard they will work, the goal is to give every individual an equal shot at “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” The entire Constitution is centered on limiting the government’s power over the individual, giving us each an even shot at success. Marxism, by contrast, divides society into immovable groups or classes – and demands that the material positions of these classes be leveled by forceable redistribution of wealth.
The two concepts could not be more opposed – one putting hope, power, opportunity, and freedom in the individual, with government as a guardrail; the other putting power in an all-knowing, coercive, brutal dictatorship of “the proletariat,” in practice empowering elites to control society’s production, stealing proceeds of work by some to support the rest, leveling groups and meeting appeals for individualism with prison or death. History is proof. Marxism leads inexorably to social misery, the end of liberty.
So, now come to modern America. Democrats are harping on “equity” – that trapdoor into Marxism, the end of a society premised on individual liberty and equal opportunity. But look closer, and you can understand how utterly bankrupt “equity” – group leveling – is.
The concept of forcing “equity” – equal outcomes for all groups across society – is nonsensical, in practical terms absurd. Even if you liked the idea – better than individual liberty and equal opportunity – it is an empirical impossibility.
Why? Because every group consists of countless crosscutting groups, every collection of aggrieved individuals had multiple, overlapping group identifiers. If you divide America by groups with unequal outcomes, crosscutting groups all endless claims against each other. The concept becomes ridiculous.
Examples make the point: Dividing America by groups, identifying them as materially different, and then pitting them against each other can only lead to self-destruction. This is how Marxism works – pitting us against each other, with the only remedy for total government control by elites.
To be real: Prejudices by one group against another, based on human differences, are as old as time, as varied as ways in which anyone can group humans, and wholly indifferent to national identity. Dividing people – to justify Marxism – is easy. Uniting them around liberty, equal opportunity, and individual responsibility – as the Founders knew – is difficult.
In Africa, as in America, inter-group prejudice exists. In Congo, Bantu persecute Pygmies. In Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, and Sudan, intertribal racism is rampant. Prejudice is a human, not a national flaw. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Africa#Congo.
Nor are skin color or economic differences the only basis on which Marxists would level us. Americans could be divided and pitted against each other by geography, gender, age, religion, height, weight, dozens of differentiators – which overlap, making inter-group leveling absurd.
Objectively, regions could contest resources by a group; women fight men and vice versa, young angle for the wealth of older Americans, short envy tall, skinny disparage fat, religions compare material position – all seeking “equity,” or material parity. That is what Marxists thrive on, stirring, activating, and mobilizing resentment, making violent and deep societal divisions.
That is exactly why the idea of “equity” – or seeing society as competing “groups” in need of material leveling rather than individuals seeking equal opportunity – is so wrong. America can be seen as a thousand groups and divided a thousand ways, but in the end, we are all individuals. Assuring an equal shot at success, equal opportunities, freedoms, mutual understanding that we should celebrate differences – is where the future lies, not in Marxism, Communism, or the modern Democrat’s all-leveling Utopia, but in our Founders’ vision, “one nation under God.”