Thankful for Equality

As I think about what I am grateful for this Thanksgiving, I am preoccupied by my gratitude for the recent healthy birth of twin grandchildren girls!  And although I am deeply concerned about the world they are growing up in, one gift I treasure is that they are born in the nation founded on the principle that all of us are “created equal.”  In 1776 this was an overwhelmingly bold idea.  After all, the ancient Greeks didn’t believe it; neither did the Egyptians or the Romans.  And of course the British and European royal families and aristocrats didn’t believe it either.  Before America, your biological parents were your lottery ticket.  And there were always far more losers who were culturally sentenced to live as peasants or slaves than winners.  It strikes me that human equality as a powerful “self-evident” ideal is the affirmation of individual human dignity.  And anytime we stray from that ideal, we have hell to pay.

America’s greatest tragedy is that our founders didn’t have the courage to implement the ideals of the Declaration of Independence fully into our Constitution.  So we allowed powerful economic interests to legalize slavery.  A mistake we paid for with our most vicious war and we continue to deal with today.  Of course there has been much needless suffering and cruelty inflicted on many individuals and groups, most notably women who were somehow excluded from warm arms of equality.  It’s a difficult ideal.  It is contrary to a Darwinian world view.  The rich, powerful, and well educated are constantly tempted to look at the world and think everyone is getting what they deserve.  It’s natural because it gets us off the hook.  To believe that we are created equal takes a leap of faith.  When we only consider the wide variation in intelligence, ability, talent, strength, and beauty, it’s obvious we are not equal.  That’s what was obvious to Hitler, the Ku Klux Klan and the eugenics supporters of the early 20th century who wanted to scientifically breed only superior humans.  There are a growing number of secular philosophers and scientists like Princeton’s Peter Singer who believe it would be perfectly okay to terminate the life of a “defective” child within 30 days of birth.  Unfortunately I am not making this up.  You see in a materialist view of the world life has no intrinsic value.  You see the idea that all of us are equal in such an unequal world is a very radical idea.  But it is the bedrock of the future of civilization.

If human life has purpose, if it is somehow intrinsically sacred, then we are all responsible to one another.  If, instead, human equality is simply a sound bite left over from an idealistic age, then the future will decay into a battle of survival of the fittest.  Shouldn’t we after all just let evolution evolve?  I hope not.  I have a big stake in affirming the spiritual dignity of all; I am willing to raise my voice everyday to affirm the ideal of equality.  You see my oldest granddaughter was overcome with virtually uncontrollable seizures by age 2.  Her brain damage means she will never be mentally more than a young child.  So what’s her value?  Why it’s the same as yours and mine…infinite.  I am grateful to live in a country whose beginnings were founded on such an impractical, noble ideal.  We just need to act like we believe it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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