Are We All Really Equal?

Why Are We Increasingly Treated Unequally Under The Law?

One of the most famous lines of all time is perhaps the most misunderstood line of all time. I imagine you might have heard of it. It goes, “All men are created equal.”

Most people take this out of context to mean that literally all men are inherently capable of the same things and are born with the same genetic capability.

Firstly, this is scientifically impossible, but secondly, and more importantly, this is not what the founding fathers meant. There is clear evidence that Thomas Jefferson, the writer, did not believe men were genetically equal. He meant that for a government to be legitimate under natural law, all men should be equal in the eyes of the law. This is a substantially more powerful idea than that of all men being genetically equal.

This means that even if you’re not as smart as the next guy, or as strong, or have as much money when you are judged before a jury of your peers, you are entitled to the same rights as any other person. Without this social contract, there is no law.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine you’re driving to work every day through a particular stoplight, and you always pull up to that stoplight next to a giant pickup truck that proceeds to blow the stoplight every time with a cop watching who doesn’t pull him over. After a while, you’re probably a bit confused. Why isn’t the cop enforcing the law? Does the law even matter?

Now let’s say one day you pull up next to the truck that promptly blows through the stoplight again, and you don’t. When you drive off it’s green, but the cop pulls you over and cites you for blowing through a stoplight. How little respect do you now have for this cop? Are you angry? Are you resentful?

Now let’s say this starts repeatedly happening, over and over. Maybe every once in a while, you do blow through the stoplight, but even if you don’t you get a citation.

Does the law even matter anymore? Or is it just an arbitrary usage of power? And if it’s just an arbitrary usage of power that can be enforced at will, do you have any incentive to follow the law with the expectation of justice? The answer, of course, is no and the inevitable end result is you will no longer respect the law and will feel you can break it. There is no social contract.

Increasingly so, this has been the state of American politics.

The examples are starting to pile up, and more than just political commentators are noticing. Perhaps one of the best examples is the enforcement of the FACE Act. This is an act designed to ensure that protestors stay a certain distance from abortion centers but also that protestors do the same for crisis pregnancy centers. As noted by Fox News, the amount of prosecutions against pro-life protestors has been more than ten times the amount of prosecutions against pro-choice protestors in the last year.

One might also take note that many conservative journalists have posted footage to Twitter over the past few years of trans and BLM activists violently assaulting people. And often, the police do nothing for fear of political persecution.

One of the more brazen displays of the unequal application of justice are the BLM riots of 2020. These riots are estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damage. They were performed at one of the

peaks of the COVID pandemic, and they produced one of the most iconic images in modern American History.

“Fiery but mostly peaceful.”

This is what they said, with an image of a building burning in the background. Meanwhile, dozens of cities came under attack from organized far-left extremists. The city of Seattle had a portion of its downtown taken over by activists and turned into an autonomous zone. They didn’t allow police or emergency services in for over a week. This was called a “Summer of Love” by the Seattle mayor, which was promptly walked back. The city of Portland’s federal buildings came under heavy attack by activists as well. The White House came under attack during this “Summer of Love,” and 60 secret service agents were injured.

I could go on, but you get the point. America was under attack. It was clearly organized. But where are the ring leaders? January 6th led to dozens of heavily armed FBI raids on the leaders of that riot; why not the 2020 riots? What’s different about them?

They carry political favor with the administrators of law in this country.

Now, in the most brazen attempt of all, they’ve shown that not only will they fail to carry out justice equally in these instances, but they will wield their weapons of power against the former president of the United States. The charges are dubious at best, all the while those in charge are not pursuing major crimes like burglaries, assaults, and the like, as the disgraceful New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg has repeatedly shown.

This leaves us with one final musing.

Why do human beings participate in society? What’s in it for them? Why should you sign a social contract with others?

The answers are something like food, shelter, and protection from harm in all its forms.

The first two took hundreds, if not thousands, of years to figure out. And in the Modern West, they have nearly been solved completely, which has allowed us to move on to the last, protection from harm.

Protection from harm means more than physical violence, but physical violence is the most important since the whole purpose of society is to further the lives of each individual.

So if someone can hit you and not suffer any consequences because they have the correct opinions, what is the purpose of participating in a contract with them? If they can violate the contract at will, and you can’t, there is no contract, and there is no law.