If we were to treat the notion of “colorblindness” as the animating principle of the Constitution, the law, and the very concepts of justice and quality, we would thereby concede the moral, ethical, and ideological debates to those who assert that our interpretation of the world must be based, one way or another, on race. Instead, we should regard liberty, not “colorblindness,” as our highest ideal.
Rothbard is right to say that the equalization of human beings is horrifying precisely because it ignores the reality that while we are equal in our humanity (that is, we are all equally human), we are not equal in our attributes: “The horror we all instinctively feel at these stories is the intuitive recognition that men are not uniform, that the species, mankind, is uniquely characterized by a high degree of variety, diversity, differentiation; in short, inequality.” From a natural-rights libertarian perspective, egalitarianism amounts to a “revolt against nature” regardless of the label attached to it.
Conservatives, square this circle for me: how do you recognize and praise the innate inequalities of humanity’s attributes, while somehow believing in the equality of “humaneness”? Wtf does that even mean?
Given those premises, a more honest position, as I interpret it, would actually align more with the intellectual far right, asserting that: if it is natural for us to be unequal in our attributes as humans, then to the degree that those attributes make us more human relative to the beasts of the natural world, they should also indicate a relative hierarchy of humanity.
I’m not a real conservative but I’ll take a stab. I don’t think the author is praising natural inequality, merely recognizing its existence and that at least some of the unequal outcomes we observe are a result of it (not that this precludes other causes). As far as equality of humanity I think the idea is that humanity is just an innate, yes/no property of humans and doesn’t depend on every member of the species being identical or that an individual achieve something like a certain score on any of the other attributes that separate us from animals. Perhaps it is arbitrary to draw the borders of humanity where we have, but as you pointed out anything else is a slippery slope.
Conservatives, square this circle for me: how do you recognize and praise the innate inequalities of humanity’s attributes, while somehow believing in the equality of “humaneness”? Wtf does that even mean?
Seems pretty self explanatory to me. You can be different but equal. To use a metaphor, a truck and a car are built in very different ways, but they still travel the same roads, use the same fuels, carry the same people, and drive to the same places. It doesnt matter how you’re built, what matters is where you go.
I hope that makes sense.
That’s a good metaphor!
Even so, there’s luxury cars/trucks and economical cars/trucks. Sure, the purpose of a car or truck is to get you from point A to point B. In the objectives of a vehicle, they’re all mostly the same. But it’s in how it achieves its purpose that differences pop up. Luxury performance cars get you from point A to point B with style and a roaring engine, while my little 2019 Hyundai Ioniq does so with an austere sense of minimalism. Thus cars, in their means of achieving their objective, are different.
Why isn’t it the same with people? I concede that humans are humans, but some humans are financiers while others are nurses. How are we equal in our humanness but different in our methods of expressing it? Charitably, it sounds like the conservative ideal is to treat those differences as equal, but that’s never what really happens.
You’re confusing the attributes of a person. I’m a high income, wealthy person with a high IQ and a ton of education. At the end of the day, I’m the same as the homeless guy down the street. We are both humans.
It’s why I never celebrate the death of another human like liberals do. we are all humans.
You’re confusing the attributes of a person. I’m a high income, wealthy person with a high IQ and a ton of education. At the end of the day, I’m the same as the homeless guy down the street. We are both humans.
Right, but so what? You’re both human. Great. It’s like the conservative argument is:
- We’re all equally human.
- Inequalities of attributes exists between humans.
- Therefore.
Therefore what? These two premises are contradictory and nothing can ever follow from them. That we’re all equally human doesn’t make it necessary to treat every human as equal before the law, and that we’re all unequal in our attributes doesn’t mean the law should provide preferential treatment either.
I mean, you said it yourself: you and a homeless person are both human, but he’s homeless and you’re wealthy and educated. Why is there a difference in income and wealth and education? Those are all social attributes, not innate human ones. Do you think what innate attributes you have justify the social inequalities?
I think the answer to that last question is what I’m missing.
Conservatives, square this circle for me: how do you recognize and praise the innate inequalities of humanity’s attributes, while somehow believing in the equality of “humaneness”
To me it makes perfect sense. Even with our differences we are all people
…keep going…
That’s what it means. Conservatives believe we are people first. Liberals before we are attributes first.