Equality vs Freedom.

Equality isn't about people being equal it's about being treated equally. Equal opportunity. ie not being judged and discriminated against because of the colour of your skin, the length of your hair, your age, your accent, your bank balance, etc.

But that isn't really equality. That is limited equality with stipulations.

You have your definition, I have mine. Yours is literal, mine is based on what people who struggle for equality are actually after.

When one speaks of equality, it usually means equal in value. I'm all for the recognition of the equality of all people.

Perhaps as a utopian concept, equality means equal result, but (with the outrageous exception of Affirmative Action), US case law pretty clearly establishes equal opportunity as being the operative legal concept. Generally those in The US that claim they are being denied equal rights under the law in fact are members of limited-interest groups lobbying for special rights nowhere guaranteed in The Constitution.

This is not to say that all individuals are granted all rights due them under law, clearly that is not the situation. However, whether any Constitutionally guaranteed right or rights may be granted pursuant to law or withheld in violation of law in any particular situation or with respect to any given individual or group of individuals, all American citizens have the same Constitutionally guaranteed rights. While perhaps not perfectly realized in practice, the principle is a matter of Constitutional law.

You're right, you can't have communism and democracy both at once. But equality doesn't have to extend to economic well being, let it cover opportunity and fair treatment.

Several years ago I bought a book entitled "Freedom or Equality" (or something very close to that) by an Austrian author. It was advertised along the lines of "in a short afternoon you can review all the government and civics you learned at school". Hah! It took me nearly three weeks of pulling teeth to get through it.

The gist of the book is that you can have freedom, where there is both the possibility of success and the possibility of failure based on your abilities and effort, or you can have equality. But you cannot have both.

(I'm working overseas, and the book is at the homestead in Arizona, so I can't give any more details)

like hingehead & stuh said, there's no contradiction if there's equality of opportunity as opposed to guaranteed equality of socio-economic status. incidentally, the equivalence of freedom and meritocracy holds only if all citizens get an equal start in life.

Rights are not granted or conferred by any document or by any governing authority.

The people did not surrender their rights to any governing authority with the expectation that some of those rights might be conferred back to them. When the people organized and established our government, they retained everything and surrendered nothing. The primary purpose of the Constitution was to SECURE the blessings of liberty, great and small, for all. The Constitution delegates specific enumerated governmental powers to the government and separates those powers among three branches as a means of checks and balances built into the system to thwart the accumulation of oppressive powers in any single branch. The people NEVER delegated power to the government to deprive people of their retained rights. Government powers are LIMITED.

* * *

The Constitution limits the power of the GOVERNMENT to discriminate among the people. The Constitution prohibits the government from denying any person equal protection under the law. As others have pointed out, equality does not mean that every person will have equal housing or equal incomes; however, in this country, every person has an equal opportunity to pursue their liberty interests and happiness in accordance with their own abilities and ambitions.

Liberty (freedom) and equal opportunity go hand-in-hand.

I agree the Constitution SECURES rights, it does not grant them - rights are rights. My point was that, while generally through violation of law and The Constitution, rights can be (and not infrequently are) withheld, denied, or otherwise impinged in practice, the Constitution in principle secures - guarantees - the rights of the citizenry. It ain't right when that goes wrong, but it happens.

And I agree wholeheartedly that liberty and equal opportunity "go hand in hand"; under The US Constitution, one has equal opportunity to succeed or fail. The rest - which it is to be, success or failure - in principle is up to personal initiative and luck; there ain't no such ling as a free lunch, so to speak. With rights come responsibilities, something some folks overlook.

Equality & freedom are all relative and perhaps neither in fact exists. We are all born with different strengths and natural skills & their utilisation is the arbitor of who/what is equal & free. One person's equality maybe another's prison. A guarenteed 9-5 office job wouild probably not satisfy a farmer. The former likes air conditoning, the latter prefers fresh air.
Maybe they both have euality & freedom, though both still have responsibilities. At some time we are all answerable to others for our actions.
One man might say he carries a gun for criime, another carries a gun for protection. Both equality & freedom are in peril if they collide here

Perhaps what we should have is Respect, for ourself and for our neighbor. A moral code might help, such as thou shall not kill or steal, but that as often as not falls by the wayside as a result of our human frailities.
Human nature has a mind of it's own......................................

Slaves with the same chains, rags, gruel, vermin-infested bedding, beatings, and overall bleak outlook arguably may be said to be equal - to one another.

oldandknew

Good points up to your final paragraph about "respect". Just as "freedom" and "equality" are relative so is "respect". There is no "ought" about it. What happens in practice is that we tend to respect those who do not impinge on our freedom or on that of others with with whom we empathise. We do not respect those whose rationality conflicts with our own. Lip service to "respect" is usually a matter of political expediency. This directly follows from the argument for the relativity of equality.

I am fairly sceptical about any moral absolutes because history shows that changing fortunes bring changing principles. Maslow's celebrated "hierarchy of needs" places the satisfaction of physical needs prior to that of social needs. Only those with the luxury of of passing the first level have the leisure time to speculate about higher levels. Westerners consume over twenty times the earths resources per capita than the worlds poorest and we of course see no real will to redress the balance.