Equality Before The Law

posted at 12:57 am on August 25, 2010 by Doctor Zero

The Washington Post brings us news of an Obama Administration report to the United Nations, confessing our “less than perfect” human rights record:

In its first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council on conditions in the United States, the State Department said Monday that some Americans, notably minorities, are still victims of discrimination. Despite success in reforming such inequities as slavery and the denial of women’s right to vote, the department said, considerable progress is still needed.

Those “successes in reforming the inequities of slavery and the denial of women’s right to vote” occurred 145 and 90 years ago, respectively.  Obama Administration functionaries must have a highly refined disdain for their own country, in order to bring them up as a way of giving a little pat on the head to an ugly, backwards nation.  There hasn’t been much progress on human rights in America since we passed the Nineteenth Amendment, but thank heavens Barack Obama is finally on the case!  He inherited the throne of a miserable country, but perhaps his enlightened leadership can work us up to a solid B+.

The Administration report lists the daunting issues it must overcome to reach the human-rights plateau occupied by China, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and the other deeply concerned members of the U.N. Human Rights Council:

High unemployment rates, hate crime, poverty, poor housing, lack of access to health care and discriminatory hiring practices are among the challenges the report identified as affecting blacks, Latinos, Muslims, South Asians, Native Americans and gays and lesbians in the United States.

As DrewM at Ace of Spades notes, none of these things are “human rights violations.”  The nature of the real violation is implied: resistance to the progressive agenda that will supposedly eliminate these unpleasant realities of life.  The essential absurdity of multiculturalism is the need to drag America down until it can be treated as equal to the thug states infesting the United Nations.  That’s how we end up with the Obama Administration moaning about “lack of access to health care” as a human rights violation, in a report submitted to a council that includes Saudi Arabia, where a court has ruled that a man’s spinal cord can be severed as punishment.

My favorite passage from the report states:

Although we have made great strides, work remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all.

The idea of “equality before the law” as the goal of the Obama Administration is ridiculous.

Equality before the law would disintegrate Big Government as we know it.  The entire enterprise is built on unequal treatment, based on race, sex, income level, and many other factors.  The leviathan State would become an anemic corpse if inequality was drained from its bloodstream.

Where was the “equality” in ObamaCare, with its countless exceptions and loopholes for favored constituencies, hammered out in backroom deals?  It will only become more unequal in the future, as care is tightly rationed, and increasing amounts of compulsion are deployed to hold the collapsing system together.  Only a fool would believe the high and mighty will have trouble obtaining the treatments rationed away from the rest of us.

The political class certainly does not face the same treatment before the law as private citizens.  This Administration and Congress are riddled with tax cheats and other scofflaws.  People like Charlie Rangel get slaps on the wrist and fundraising parties, where ordinary people would be looking at prison time.  The great political drama of 1998 involved getting Bill Clinton off the hook for perjury, a crime that would put the little people behind bars.  On a less criminal level, the ruling class routinely exempts itself from laws and mandates applied with relentless enthusiasm to their subjects.

The concept of progressive taxation, central to the survival of a socialist system, is based on the denial of equal property rights.  Those in higher tax brackets must endure diminished rights to their income.  The massive network of bailouts and subsidies constructed over the last few years is a case of profound inequality before the law.  Favored industries are granted benefits, paid with funds confiscated from all those who do not receive the subsidies.  Every subsidy is a tax against those who do not receive it.

True equality before the law is, perhaps, the greatest and most intimidating concept yet produced by human philosophy.   Centuries after our Founders worked to contain this concept within the luminous words of our Constitution, we are still grappling with its ramifications.  Understanding that equality leads to freedom from tyranny, oppression, and discrimination is relatively easy.  It’s far more difficult to accept that it also means citizens cannot impose their demands on each other, using the power of the State… or that free people cannot be coerced into following even the most brilliant and compassionate central plans.

In a nation that fully embraced equality before the law, the compulsive force of government would be used only to protect the citizens from crime and external threats.  Any further exercise of force requires unequal treatment, by definition.  Perhaps we will be the first nation to set aside the crude implements of compulsion and dependency, to embrace the fearsome power of true equality.  That would really be something worth reporting to the human rights council of the United Nations.

Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.

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