« Why Do They Keep The Clay Pigeon Around? | WILLisms.com | Libby Gets Out Of Jail, Not Quite Free »

Quotational Therapy: Part 136 -- Goldwater, On Equality.

Equality Shouldn't Mean Socialism-

Watching the Democrats debate and speak on C-SPAN in recent weeks, it is clear that the left-wing obsession with "inequality" is still alive and well. Inequality this, inequality that. Bush's tax cuts for the rich this, executive bonuses that. Corporations this, outsourcing that. Oil companies and Wall Street are evil, socialist health care and unions are good.

Class warfare, year after year, maintains a peculiar resonance among Democrats. As usually is the case when prosperity is as preponderant as it is today, targeting successful people for being too successful is now the default rhetorical point of all '08 hopefuls on the left.

Listening to each of them speak, they all seem to believe that any new wealth must be divided evenly. Otherwise, it is just unfair.

Equality is a nice notion. But I have never understood how those on the left can so consistently misconstrue the "equality" America's Founders wrote and spoke about to mean equality of results.

Indeed, Barry Goldwater felt the same way:

Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

-Barry Goldwater, in 1964.

Previous Quotational Therapy Session:

Steve Jobs On Education Unions.

The right quote can be therapeutic, so tune in to WILLisms.com for quotational therapy on Monday and Friday.

Posted by Will Franklin · 2 July 2007 02:58 PM

Comments

Posted by: Ironman at July 2, 2007 04:02 PM