Equality

In this weeks reading the most interesting thing to me was from chapter #6: Equality, Values and Merit. The first thing that stood out was the quote by Oliver Wendell Jones, Jr. at the very beginning of the book, "I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealized envy." Right off the bat I thought to myself, "Hold on, what's the story." But in reality, if you look at SOCIAL equality, there is more then meets the eye.

As I see it equality can be split up into three categories: first, there is equality of law, which has all people accountable to the same rules of law, second equality of rights, which has all people entitled to the same rights as everybody else and thirdly social equality. The first two I whole heartedly agree with. Everybody should be under the same rules of the game and have the same rights as civilians. However in regards to enforcing social equality, I'm not so sure.

In order to achieve complete social equality, almost certainly the state has to take something from another group and give it to another, knock a certain group of people down a peg or two or provide opportunities for only particular individuals. Sounds a bit like communism, haha. Basically, what has to be done is to step on the toes of citizen's liberties to benefit the few. I feel that people should have liberty to become who and what they want to be. And really, if they don't like their situation in life in almost all cases all they have to do is change it. Simple as that.

This may be a touchy subject, but one of the best examples of this I can think of is affirmative action. Why should somebody be advanced ahead of those with better qualifications simply because they are of a particular race? This isn't to say that they should be kept back, absolutely not, but in all honesty if the affirmative action situation were reversed there would be riots and rightly so. People are individuals and as such should be taken so as one at a time. They should not be condemned or given special rights because they are of a particular group. I feel this is true equality.