The lie of egalitarianism

By Henry Fowler, Stevensville

I previously wrote about the lies of systemic racism and white privilege but there is another older lie that makes these two lies possible. That is the lie of egalitarianism. 

Egalitarianism is the belief that all people are born with equal genetic potential and that the environment (i.e., external factors) is the only influence on a person’s educational and socio-economic achievements. This is one of the foundational beliefs of modern liberalism. 

Liberals blame educational and socio-economic inequality on environmental factors such as family and socio-economic background, poverty, exploitation, oppression, discrimination, prejudice, etc. Since all people have equal potential, it is just a matter of changing the environment to achieve roughly equal life outcomes. According to liberalism, government’s role therefore is to change the environment through laws (i.e., social engineering) in order to produce equality of outcomes. This has been the rationale for social engineering projects like the billions of dollars spent on “War on Poverty” and other redistribution programs since the 1960s to lift blacks out of poverty and the racial preferences in hiring, promotions, contracting, and university admissions that are euphemistically called “affirmative action.” 

Egalitarianism is so critical as the theoretical basis of liberalism’s social engineering projects that any scientific researcher in the genetics of human behavior is subject to suppression, censure, punishment, defamation, and even violence, if their research causes the questioning of egalitarian orthodoxy. Look at what happened to Arthur Jensen, Hans J. Eysenck, William Shockley, J. Philippe Rushton, Carleton Coon, John Baker, Edward O. Wilson, Richard Herrnstein, Thomas Bouchard, Michael Levin, Vincent Sarich, and most recently Charles Murray at Middlebury College. 

Despite this liberal effort to suppress intellectual freedom, advances in genetics and neuroscience prove that there are significant genetic differences between the sexes, races, and classes in personality, abilities, and social behavior. Charles Murray summarizes the scientific proof in his new book “Human Diversity” (2020). 

If individuals and groups (sexes, races, and classes) are genetically different in personality, abilities, and social behavior, then they do not have the same potential for educational and socio-economic achievement. Some amount of inequality, therefore, is inevitable. This logic challenges the egalitarian assumption of liberalism’s social engineering projects and also explains why they have largely been failures. 

The failure of these social engineering projects (“War on Poverty,” “affirmative action,” etc.) in ending inequality has been mistaken for the continued existence of “systemic racism” and “white privilege.” According to liberal thinking, groups are potentially equal and therefore groups should have educational and socio-economic achievements in roughly equal proportions. Since that is not the case, liberals wrongfully blame “systemic racism” and “white privilege.” The true reason for unequal results is genetic differences in potential. For this same reason, the socialist and redistributionist programs advocated today by Democrats to solve the problem of racial inequality will fail.