Equity versus Equality

                                                            Equity versus Equality

Words

Words, words, words, oh how the politicians love words and often, too often, use them as subterfuge for their own programs.  

Equally Created

From the Declaration of the United States, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Being created equal does not mean we are all of one mind, height, weight, sex, nature, color, belief, or family.  We are individuals.  We are free. We can make choices.  We are unique in the animal world in our ability to discern, knowing right from wrong. We are  born as male or female, as God chooses. What we do with our Rights is up to us.  The system provides opportunities, from which families, the parents, Mom and Dad, need to provide the encouragement and incentive to achieve.   

Government is neither God nor parent.  Government is to “establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

  

Let’s unbundle this:  Government makes 1.) Laws; 2.) provides for our safety in our homes, neighborhoods and streets throughout our Nation, thus ensuring our citizens (not illegals) and our property are safe from harm;  3.) oversees, patrols, and protects our borders and Nation by forming a police and defense network, to include army, navy, air-force, border agents, et al; and 4.) as to the general welfare uses federal revenues (tax dollars) on matters of general (applies to everyone) interest to the Federal Government (within the framework of the Constitution). Government was never intended to be an impediment to success. 

Power to the People

Tax revenues are to be responsibly used for the ‘common good,’ no exclusions, thus not for anything the politicians, or the Administration, pleases.    Pet projects in Representative’s districts becomes a problem; yes ‘pork’ can be abusive, wasteful, and not serve the people properly. 

The Federal Government cannot ignore the power given to the States (the 10th Amendment).  In that regard falls health, agriculture, education, the work force (Right to Work), the environment, energy production, local projects and more. But today our Federal Government encroaches seemingly daily, stepping on State’s toes often. When the Government allocates money to States (as the taxes come from citizens of States) it attaches strings, shackles in some cases, as if it is the Fed's dollars.  This is in an effort to garner power over the States.  It works - putting more power in Washington DC than originally intended.

This is where words matter.  Our equal nature is endowed by our Creator, God, not the current Administration of the United States.  The Government can only impinge on our equal Rights.   The Government wants to be God, but it is not. WeThePeople must insure that is the case. 

Equity Contrived

Equity is a different matter.  Making everyone the same, using equity to achieve, a balancing act, defies the intent of our Constitution.  A poor man can become rich, and a rich man can become poor.  That is equal opportunity.  Take risks, achieve results, or fail.  Taking from a rich man and giving to the poor man, without the permission of the rich man, denying a gracious nature (if the rich person has one), is not the role of Government.  Using the tax structure to achieve such an end is an abuse.  

Promising ‘better outcomes’ for the poor if elected, many power-hungry politicians will use tax dollars, as if it is charity, to garner votes.  Increased welfare and entitlements is their gift. It is not their money being spent. The results are more often directed toward themselves.  Promises go unfulfilled, while their seats in Congress are occupied (when not otherwise on vacation, or calling-in, that is virtual representation) and the rhetoric continues.  There are charities, to include churches, that do a better job, with considerably less bureaucracy, in caring for those in need.

Education and Equity - An Example

Apply equity and equality to education.  A teacher stands before a classroom of citizens, the rainbow of colors in their classroom is not an issue, and imparts information of value to their futures. Texts are provided and other classroom materials, to be used by the citizens.  Citizens include children, of course.  How each citizen uses that which they are provided is up to them, and/or their support base, encouraging, even helping, them to achieve.  Some achieve at a higher level than others. The Government may provide the buildings, help with the resources, but the outcomes are not controlled by the Government.  

When politicians use the term ‘equity’ they want to balance the outcomes.  How does that work?  Who really benefits?  If in a class of 100 hundred, 40 receive A’s, 30 B’s, 20’C’s, and 10 receive D’s or less, even fail, is the equity to be debated?  Are the A’s to have their results shared with the D’s, take 10 points from one and give it to others, now we have 70 B’s and 30 C’s, but then again is that a problem.  The Government wants all one grade, or no grade, so that whites, hispanics, asians, blacks, boys and girls, all have the same grade, either all B-’s or C+’s. What happens to the incentive to achieve? 

Balanced outcomes with your money is what many politicians expound upon.  I have not focused on race, but clearly there are Government elected officials that pander to different races, as if they are not equal.  It appears to becomes a racial problem when in the analysis clusters of one race seem to outperform clusters of other races (unbalanced outcomes).  Maybe not the case individually, as there are always exceptions.  

What is a curiosity is that if whites made up most of the D and C group, blacks the A group, and the rest in the middle, who would cry ‘foul?’  But if it is the opposite, then hear the din of ‘racist, racist, racist.’  

In NYC the allocation of resources is being limited today and the specialized schools, requiring tests to enter, have a larger percentage of one race than others.  In this case, Asians. I say good for them, a credit to those that got accepted and to their families. The (proposed) revised school plan will discriminate against Asian Americans, because they are the A class.  This is applying ‘equity,’ by Government edict.  The result, clearly, a necessary dumbing down of the curriculum that would be required to adapt to the lower standards because of the balancing act to bring less gifted students into those classrooms. The politicians call it ‘diversification.’  This action is designed to ‘end racism.’ How is that?  Are they saying the more intelligent kids or the achievers are racist when it comes to the less intelligent kids or non-achievers? Duh?  They are wanting to use a quota system to bring in more blacks and hispanics.  Is that not inherently racist saying blacks and hispanics in New York have lower IQ’s?  Are the politicians really the ‘racists’ in this case?

The students that are accepted into the specialized school programs are from lower income areas. It is a focus of the Discovery Program to help them.  The program already discriminates against those considered ‘better off.’ So now poverty is not enough, color becomes a factor.  

This is not how our Founders intended the general welfare of its citizens to be viewed. Government is to promulgate laws and design systems for the common good, that is all inclusive.  

Inclusion

Certainly the current Administration, influenced by it's Progressive base, is not an all inclusive body.  Democratic Senator Mazie K Hirono of Hawaii does not want the Government hiring white people until there are more trans, gays, blacks, women, whatever her limited rainbow view, or balancing act, desires, is achieved.  Skill sets are not important.  

Political (In)Correctness

Beware of the words your politicians use, as well as those of their MSM collaborators.  

Some examples: 

The ‘Main Stream Media’ is not mainstream. It is more a propaganda machine for the left.

The term ‘Gender,’ why not just ‘sex.’  There are gender words in language, such as calling a ship a ‘her’ or french terms that label items feminine or masculine, but only God decides what sex you are at birth.  Choosing an alternate sex, as your gender, is a misnomer. “Sex-Reassignment Surgery," is a whopper, as how do you reassign sex.   You can manipulate an organ, even amputate or mutilate it, but that is not changing what your body was intended to be when born.  Think reproduction.  Then there is “cisgender," does that make sex a human choice? As opposed to just transgender.  It is not man’s role to alter God’s design for their purposes.

Do a little research on who we are as a Nation, that is a Republic, not a ‘Democracy.'  A Democracy offers inherent dangers that can result in mob rule, in essence,  

What about ‘Anti-discrimination?’ What I wrote earlier about the NYC specialized schools is discrimination, voiced as anti-discrimination, a word trick. 

“Undocumented Immigrants” is another artifice.  They are illegals, for sure.  But when a politician gives them a drivers license, which many States permit, they (illegals) have ‘documents.’ thus becoming ‘documented immigrants.’  Deceptive indeed!  But they are still neither citizen nor legal. 

“Pro-choice” is really "pro-abortion," but sounds better.  It favors the politicians that want to soft peddle killing babies, even defining a ‘person’ in such a way that a fetus is not a person, and also babies, until they attain certain skills. Thus killing a fetus, and for some politicians, a baby, is not killing a person.   

Then there is ‘Equity’ or ‘Equality.’ We are all equal under God; our Rights are to be equal (if the government stays out of it). ‘Equity’ has become an avenue for civil remedies. Politicians bathe in the pool of Identity Politics, identifying circumstances with a person, locations to a person, and the pathway to equal outcomes, opportunity, connections, resources to achieve equal outcomes, to a person, and then labels them.  There is a scale, and to balance that scale, to achieve equity, persons to be the same, means weights have to be added to one side or another to be just. The most popular weight is money. To distribute justice to achieve equal outcomes is most expensive to the high income earners, and thus they become the targets for disproportionate taxation, to satisfy the financial requirements, as Government revenues.  The politicians in power believe they are administering justice to us all to achieve equal outcomes, and if you are not in accord, you should feel awful, and suffer the guilt of success.  

Leftist (Democrat) Power Orientation and Complaints

The Government, those leaning left in particular, believe tax revenues are Government money; it is their revenues to spend accordingly.  They so quickly forget it is not the Government’s, but WeThe People’s.  One Democratic economist spoke on a MSM outlet that the tax breaks provided under the Trump Administration took away ‘our’ revenues, speaking for his power base.  That is how they think.  

‘Our’ Government needs to be responsive to US, not the other way around.  But is it? 

What About WeThePeople?

Beware the landscape of our nation is being altered and not to the delight of the majority of WeThe People.  There are the complainers, those that tell everyone they hate our Nation, and how America does not provide for its people fairly. That insist you too feel the same.  The left prefers their own definition of what is ‘fair.’  Capitalism is not ‘fair’ in their world. The MSM provides a venue for their voices to be heard, while those that love America, the patriots, the godly, the police, the border patrol, the producers, are cleverly dismissed. Social media has become the arbiter of free speech, and is protected under current laws. But they do not provide the same freedoms to conservative voices, or the champions of the right. This is neither equal nor equitable

Yet the complainers have a choice; they can leave.  There are borders in other countries they can cross.  But, they do not.  

At the same time there are millions that would love to live here for the opportunities and advantages America provides, not to forget the security, the objectivity, the education, the jobs, and freedoms.  And do so legally.  There is a process for that to happen.

What might be an equitable solution is to have those that do not love US, leave us now, go where they believe life will be better for them, and leave the remainder alone.  Taking this step might do wonders for our welfare system and entitlement programs, producing monumental savings for WeThe People. In equity that makes great sense. 

The utopia they (the complainers) seek though is right here, and they know it.  They just prefer complaining, race-baiting, and feathering their political nests with lies, scraps of old MSM publications, freshly printed dollars, and used placards from BLM marches & ANTIFA protests, and the detritus from Minnesota & Portland riots & businesses destroyed.   

To Sum Up

America is most equal as to what it offers its citizens. We may not as individuals be equal in height, some are too tall, some too short, but we can be creative to adjust to a physical difference. Do not be fooled by images of cartoon persons of different heights who, in ‘equity', are placed at the same level to peer over a ball field wall.  That is a false representation.  To say that one race is shorter than another and thus needs to be leveled is an aberration.   Teachers are trained to teach people with different intellectual capacities, aptitudes, and backgrounds.  Using ‘equity’ is disingenuous, and foul play to those willing to work and apply themselves to what is available to everyone.  

Outcomes cannot all be the same. 

by

Thomas W. Balderston

Author and Blogger