Quickies: Rhetorical Concessions Engender Ideological Defeat

     I’ve generally enjoyed Andrea Tantaros’s commentary...until now:

     Aha! The “equality” chimera in full attack, with claws raised and saliva dripping from its fangs! I thought she was smarter than that.

     This morning at least, if I could inscribe a single tenet on the forebrains of all the conservative commentators on Earth, it would be this one:

“Equality” is a stalking-horse for totalitarianism.

     There is no “equality” among human beings. There should be equality before the law: meaning that one’s identity should have no bearing on his guilt or innocence when charged with an offense. But that’s the only sort of equality possible in a free society: the “all men are created equal” mantra Thomas Jefferson understood full well that has been twisted so viciously by the Left.

     Freedom – the absence of governmental coercion or constraint from individual decision-making, excepting acts of aggression or fraud – must be regarded as a principle. If it is not – if it’s merely a gauzy desideratum to be traded off for something else that some gaggle of mouthy activists have demanded – it will always lose. A politician who refuses to accept those dicta is not to be trusted with the smallest degree of public authority or trust.

     An out-and-out socialist once said to me, quite baldly, that if freedom stands in the way of equality, then freedom must be abandoned as a societal good. He meant it, and all its implications, quite sincerely. I knew what he wanted and told him so...but he would not back away.

     Politicians are seldom that forthright...but whenever freedom is counterpoised to something they want for their constituents, their supporters, their creditors, or their standings in the polls, they mock-reluctantly relinquish the defense of freedom. How, then, does such a politician differ in principle from my long-ago socialist adversary?

     Something to think about over your Cheerios.^®