Silence Dogood Wire

As the culture war rages on, the number of heroes that have fallen by the wayside continues to grow. Superman is the latest casualty of wokeism. He is now a climate change-fighting bisexual. Gone are the days of his manly destruction of bad guys and noble fight for “truth, justice, and the American way.” Instead, he attends climate rallies where he supports obnoxious blue-haired social outcasts in their quest for a better world.

Scientific American took a similar stance on classic heroes by cancelling Jedi Knights. The publication ran a piece titled “Why the Term ‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” The authors go on to state that “the name JEDI can inadvertently associate our justice work with stories and stereotypes that are a galaxy far, far away from the values of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.” This begs the question; why would you not want to be associated with the stereotype of a Jedi? If a person of any age watched Star Wars and said that they didn’t like the Jedi, we would rightly think that they were crazy.

The destruction of Superman and other heroes demonstrates something much more devastating than the idiotic alteration of classic characters. It represents the systematic destruction of our value systems. 

Superman’s fight against climate change illustrates a shift away from the traditional fight against good and evil. After all, climate change is not evil, it is merely an ecological phenomenon. By shifting our depictions of evil away from classic villains like the Joker or Doomsday we are signalling that everyday humans are the only evil that remains. 

Family life is now something to be ashamed of. In fact, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle recently won an award for their decision to limit their family to two children. I wonder what this makes a loving mother who decides to have four or more children? Immoral and destructive, perhaps. Also, if two is better than four, then why don’t we sterilize the planet and cease to exist? This doesn’t make for a very just or inspiring ideology.

And as we cast a disparaging gaze on those who are undeserving of it, we ignore the real evil that exists. Who cares if Anakin Skywalker walks into the Jedi Temple and kills the younglings who are destined to become great Jedi? We already have Planned Parenthood temples built for this purpose. We allow the killing of babies for the benefit of the mother, why not allow it for those who will be affected by the spectre of climate change? According to the cynics we are all damned because we contribute to global warming and participate in a society that  is nothing more than a sexist, racist, homophobic hellhole.

A community cannot sustain itself if it does not attempt to uphold a moral code and celebrate the people who work hard to uphold that code (whether they be real or fictionalized). When upholding a moral code goes by the wayside, a society slowly crumbles as people refuse to maintain it. What is worse, perhaps, is the fact that the Jokers and Doomsdays of the world still exist as we wallow in our self pity and turn a blind eye to their victims.

The stories that are told by books and movies are more than just entertaining time fillers. The Christian apologist C.S. Lewis wrote that “One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” Fairy tales and superheroes inform our sense of right and wrong. When these are destroyed they leave us bereft of a moral compass. Falling prey to cynicism and despair is something that should be reserved for teenagers. However, because society has been so stripped of moral values, adults are falling prey to this tendency. Many are too bereft of a moral code to transmit values to their children and opt for the replacement of religion with tolerance. 

The culture warriors came for the spiritual heroes by removing religion from public life. They came for the political heroes by tearing down statues. And now they are coming for the remnant of moral teaching that still exists: fiction stories. Superman must be castrated, the Jedi must be cast aside, and we must all bow to the woke.

Your humble servant,

Silence Dogood

In an era where there is a short supply of virtue and a high demand for meaning, the liberal ideal of unending tolerance has sought to fill the void. Gay pride flags adorn embassies, American flags are desecrated with shallow one-liners, and there is a general “do what you like” attitude that pervades American life. 

Signs that say “coexist” in fonts that display various religious symbols (the c is a Muslim moon, the o is a peace symbol, the e is a gender symbol, etc.) are proudly put up as if it is somehow virtuous to abstain from choosing a moral code.

None of this is good for society as a whole. G.K. Chesterton stated that “tolerance is the virtue of those who believe nothing.” In order to live a good life one must have a conception of what the good is. And to determine what the good is, one must discriminate against various ways of living, and thereby judge those other ways of living as wrong or even evil.

Tolerance is only adequate insofar as it prevents the excessive imposition of one person’s will upon another person’s. When tolerance seeks to take the place of morality, it necessarily destroys morality because morality is by definition, intolerant of immorality. 

In order to transmit values from one generation to another, parents must instill certain standards in their children, thereby implicitly judging other standards. If tolerance takes the place of morality then no standard can be put forth, leading to indecisive people who are unable to stand up for the good.

Tolerance as morality manifested itself in France after The Great War in the form of pacifism. Teacher unions and intellectuals promoted pacifist school policies that constantly denounced the evils of war. In his book Intellectuals and Society Thomas Sowell wrote about how soldiers were reduced to mere victims rather than heroes who gave up their lives to defend their civilization.

By the outbreak of the Second World War France was sufficiently sedated to mount only a mild resistance, rapidly surrendering to the Nazis. Pacifism was so tolerant of evil that it preached nonviolence, even in the face of tyranny and conquest.

Perhaps extreme tolerance would be able to replace morality if men were inclined to be angels. If this were the case, no moral code would be necessary. Utopia would only require that we go about living our lives.

But history is a constant struggle between good and evil. When tolerance replaces virtue it sedates the population, making them unable to stand up for the good, leaving room for the forces of evil to take control. Rioting is excused, destruction of statues is excused, obesity is celebrated, and self-expression is hailed as the paramount of human success. And as society rots from the inside the barbarians come. China came for Hong Kong, the Taliban came for Kabul, Hezbollah came for Israel, and the tyrants continue to play. Most of history has seen humanity languish under tyranny. Tyrants are always hungry and vicious and can only be defeated by the righteous rage that is only possible with a moral code.

Your humble servant,

Silence Dogood

I recently had the pleasure of watching the Disney film Cruella, about an anti-hero Cruella Deville who was featured in the classic 101 Dalmatians. The movie began with an orphaned girl named Estella who eventually worked her way to the top of the fashion industry while unseating her evil rival.

Although the film was quite good, I must say that I was not exactly impressed by the outfits that were supposedly fashionable. Perhaps I don’t have a critical eye but most of the gowns worn by Cruella looked quite atrocious. Also, one of the male protagonists named Artie wore weird makeup and a strange shirt that were deemed fabulous.

All of this wouldn’t be noteworthy if the odd fashion was reserved for theatrical value, but it isn’t. Scrolling through Vogue’s fashion section one will see an agglomeration of outfits that are either extremely ugly or designed to show as much skin as possible. Not quite what I would call the height of an industry that has a profound impact on civilization.

It seems that much of what fashion has become is the desire to break social customs by creating what are often quite hideous outfits. Alternatively, it is the desire to sexualize those wearing certain outfits in the name of “empowerment” or some other ill-thought concept.

If fashion is merely the breaking of social customs then fashion gurus should certainly not receive much credit. I could go to school in boxer-briefs and a tank top and break social customs (and still look more fashionable than some of the models out there). Additionally, if it is the attempt to sexualize its subjects then all fashion is an impediment. Why not just walk around naked all the time?

Fashion used to be quite unique and interesting. For women in Victorian England the desire to “look good” had to be reconciled with the morals of the time, posing a challenge for fashion designers. The sexual had to be combined with the tasteful discipline of the era. Quite a contradiction that could only be reconciled with the intelligence of a true artist.

In the case of men, the problem of fashion has been related more to the willful breaking of social customs than their sexualization. Thus, Harry Styles and others don dresses or wear their pants around their knees. This trend of men breaking social customs is actively promoted by fashionistas who are clearly destroying their own profession. The term fashion is meant to denote a socially acceptable code of dress that is considered tasteful. However, the only thing that is fashionable now is everything that is unfashionable. This is a symptom of undisciplined postmodernism. A truly communist position that makes fashion a “wear whatever the hell you want” construct.

I believe that fashion serves a very important purpose that has been completely degraded by those who attempt to call themselves fashion designers. In the case of women, fashion designers have the difficult task of making a woman pleased with the way she looks while reconciling this with the necessary moral demands that are placed upon society. 

In the case of men a code of dress is meant to instill the discipline necessary for success. The job of the fashion designers is to create outfits that maintain that discipline while also making the wearer of the outfit outstanding in a way that does not make him seem obnoxious and stupid.

Fashion is a combination of both self expression and societal expression. To claim that it is self expression is to engage in needless arrogance, indiscipline, and immorality. To claim that it is societal expression is to become a fashion Nazi who polices dress codes with the utmost rigor. Fashion designers must reconcile these two concepts to create something truly beautiful.

In an unsurprising turn of events, the U.S. foreign policy establishment has found it necessary to spend more blood and treasure in the defense of Afghanistan.

 After the Biden administration facilitated a precipitous troop withdrawal from the region, the situation deteriorated rapidly, forcing the Pentagon to announce that it will send an additional 3,000 troops back into Afghanistan in order to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghan interpreters from Kabul.

The move was no shocker given that the Taliban are a major threat in the region that refuses to compromise with a moderate government.

 In his book Battlegrounds former general H.R. McMaster critiqued the supreme naivete of those who want to make peace with the Taliban. He sarcastically asked whether a peace deal would only allow the Taliban to bulldoze girls’ schools every other week. The fact of the matter is that no peace deal can legitimize or civilize the Taliban

The new troop deployment is supposedly being sent exclusively for evacuation measures but it is quite clear that this will not be the case for long. Part of the rationale for troop withdrawal in the first place was the assumption that the Taliban would not be able to rapidly gain control. A month ago, Biden claimed that “the likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” 

Despite this, the AP reported that the Taliban has captured “12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as part of a weeklong sweep that has given them effective control of about two-thirds of the country.”

The White House is also sending conflicting messages. State Department Spokesman Ned Price stated that “This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not a wholesale withdrawal. What this is is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint.” This, despite the fact that President Biden has been adamantly in favor of an end to the mission in Afghanistan.

It seems that those in power are realizing an age old cliche; you can’t have your cake and eat it too. 

When fighting a group as savage and powerful as the Taliban, producing a lasting and successful peace necessitates the obliteration of the enemy. 

Artificial cease fires merely prolong the conflict and allow the enemy to regain control. The world-renowned military strategist Edward Luttwak argues that UN imposed ceasefires are ineffective and merely intensify wars when the incentives for war remain in place. In his book Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace– which is required reading at U.S. military institutions- Luttwak writes that 

Unless further diplomatic interventions directly ensue to impose peace negotiations as well, cease-fires merely relieve war-induced exhaustion, favoring the reconstitution and rearming of the belligerents, thus intensifying and prolonging the fighting once the cease-fire comes to an end. That was true of the Arab-Isreali war of 1948-49 which might have ended in a number of weeks by sheer exhaustion, if two successive ceas-fires  ordained by the UN Security Council  had not allowed the belligerents to recuperate till they were ready to resume fighting.

This is certainly the case in Afghanistan where a weakened Taliban was allowed to recuperate after American morale was weakened.

The Biden administration must be forced to make a choice. Either it must make the decision to withdraw and deal with the fallout or it must choose to pursue an effective military strategy to eliminate the threat. Both entail serious costs but it beats the alternative of allowing a wound to fester while remaining in the region for another twenty years.

On July 31 Simone Biles announced that she would withdraw from the final floor competition at the Tokyo Olympics. USA Gymnastics tweeted out that “Simone has withdrawn from the event final for floor and will make a decision on beam later this week.” Biles also claimed that she was suffering from the “twisties” and that it was dangerous for her to compete. Celebrities were quick to support and even celebrate her decision. Biles stated that both Michael Phelps and Oprah Winfrey reached out to her.

Now perhaps competing was dangerous. Most of us are not gymnasts and will never know what a professional gymnast goes through. Maybe, dropping out was the right decision for her.

However, all of the hubbub around her decision serves to distract from an important fact; Simone Biles failed. She failed herself, she failed her team, and she failed her country. And she should feel bad. 

Saying this is not cruel or a license for internet trolls to berate her. It is merely a recognition that what she was striving for was valuable and she did not perform up to her full potential. If what she did was not failure, then why be a gymnast in the first place? If it is so pointless that quitting because of your mental health is celebrated more than winning gold, then what is the point? 

Saying that something is a fail does not automatically make someone a failure. What makes people into failures is telling them that their fails are completely excusable and even worthy of celebration. The concept of failure is valuable because it lets you know that you didn’t perform in a manner consistent with greatness and allows you to change your conduct accordingly.

The fact that people are slobbering over Biles more than the members of USA Gymnastics who won gold such as Suni Lee, illustrates how our society is attempting to eliminate the entire concept of failure.

This is mainly a trend driven by the left and is reflected in the fat positivity movement currently sweeping our country. As with many self-indulgent movements, the Fat Acceptance Movement began in the 60s in order to eliminate bias against fat people and make them feel comfortable with themselves. Now that the movement has become mainstream woke companies like Athleta are bowing to its dictates by dropping trim models and manikins for obese ones in oversized clothing. 

This would be a good idea if the message was “you are overweight and we have made workout clothes for you so that you can go to the gym and get your life together.” However, the message is completely the opposite. In January Athleta announced that it would be training its employees on body positivity language. It seems that Athleta and other woke institutions have forgotten that not being a jerk is different from celebrating an unhealthy trend in society. 

The end goal of the people who attempt to eliminate the concept of failure is to destroy our sense of telos. Telos is a Greek concept developed by Aristotle, positing that things are inherently meant for an ultimate end. In America, the end of humanity is commonly thought of as virtue, strength, courage, faith, and meaning. By eliminating the concept of failure and ushering in an era of unmitigated self-esteem the radicals are destroying the ability of people to improve themselves and lead a good life. This is certainly not compassionate. Failure hurts, but it hurts for a reason. Telling people that everything is ok when they fail is a lie that prevents them from overcoming obstacles in order to better themselves.

Rebels serves many purposes. After all, our first president was a rebel. Rebels can bring about freedom and justice. They do so by adhering to the virtues of courage and humility towards the elders that brought them into existence. 

However, rebellion can also be destructive. “Rebels without a cause” do not rebel in order to promote justice and truth. They rebel because they instinctively dislike their society. Perhaps they will find themselves fighting against something truly awful as the radicals of the 60s found themselves coincidentally fighting with Civil Rights leaders. But fighting against something bad does not necessarily make you a good person. Perhaps you are just as destructive as the evil person you passionately hate. To this day both the communists and the fascists hate each other. I think that every sane person can agree that neither of these groups is desirable.

Throughout history, rebellion in teenage boys and young adults has served a very distinct purpose; it has turned them into men. Benjamin Franklin was a rebel. As a young man he escaped the service of his brother and travelled to Pennsylvania to find work. He then created a calendar of virtues to practice living a good life and established a printing business that allowed him to retire at the young age of forty. John Brown and Harriet Tubman were also rebels who fought against the injustice of slavery with a dedication to scripture. During WWII young boys were rebels. They would lie about their age to fight for their country.

Bucking the system to pursue virtue in accordance with faith, reason, courage, and a respect for the ancestors who made your life possible is admirable. In our decadent age, however, rebellion has taken quite a different turn. It has taken the form of binge-drinking, bogus gender identification, and incessant whining. Rather than turning people into men, modern rebellion has turned teenagers and young adults into perpetual children, shunning discipline and respect in favor of social media pontificating and a disdain for standards. This is echoed in the incessant demand for the god of tolerance to reign supreme in the public square. Unlike the tolerance of John Locke, the new tolerance is hateful, seeking to destroy anyone who believes in standards. The new standard is standardlesseness.

Perhaps the new rebellion is the cause of the high divorce rates in our society. The thrill seekers can never be content with a marriage which has lost its youthful passion. Instead they must seek out new passion for the sake of their  happiness. What about the happiness of their children? What about the happiness of their spouse? What about the happiness of society? What about the happiness of God? The indulgence of the new rebels causes many to disregard these questions.

The old rebellion was sacrificial and manly. It was not rebellion to incessantly indulge yourself in pleasure. Certainly it entailed mistakes and even vice, but in the past, rebelling also meant that you had a vision. To pursue a vision takes discipline. “Rebels without a cause” are not admirable. They are lost and visionless. They attach themselves to grievances without proper evaluation. They seek to break taboos for the mere sake of breaking taboos. 

In the end, the new rebellion brings about the death of man by making him weak and over-indulgent.

In the fight against critical race theory those who still possess common-sense common sense often invoke the apolitical classroom. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” they say “if we could go back to a time before political correctness?” Perhaps it is this “apolitical” classroom that has led us to this mass delusion in the first place. 

 In a public school system bereft of any other goal than “tolerance” or some other lovely phrase, special interest groups and unions will rush to fill the void. After all, a society must have standards and if those standards are not implemented by curriculum, then they will be implemented by somebody else.

 Though well meaning, people who repeat the common refrain for public schools don’t entirely understand the nature of education. A curriculum is by nature political, it leaves out some facts in favor of others and presents some material at the expense of others. It is a political decision to teach that capitalism lifted people out of poverty and communism killed 100 million people.

When individuals call for an apolitical classroom they are merely expressing a desire to return to a time when we could agree politically on what to teach. What this led to was a shoddy educational system which left students devoid of any real philosophy. They were then turned over to a university system which disregarded American values and sought to undermine the Culture and governing institutions of this country.

It is an insult to the idea of education that Aristotle, Plato, Burke, Locke, and Smith, are not taught within the school system. You certainly can’t count on universities to offer a balanced teaching of these monumental figures. Many are doing away with Western Civilization courses.

The left realizes that many have blinded themselves to the nature of education. Therefore, they have politicized everything from Homer to Shakespeare in an attempt to uproot intelligent curriculum while appealing to the sensibilities of the “apoliticals.” Even something as basic as biology must be destroyed by gender theorists in the name of diversity and inclusion.

In the words of G.K. Chesterton “Tolerance is the virtue of those who believe nothing.” We should not tolerate those who attempt to force evil and absurd views upon students. 

Charter schools have always been a first choice for conservatives and libertarians. Unlike our opponents we desire freedom and choice. However, if leftists and former liberals continue to refuse parents the right to choose education for their children, conservatives must start developing their own curriculum that focuses on personal virtue, a respect for our heroic ancestors, and the classic literature and philosophy that has built our society. One must choose a side. The Apolitical classroom was always an illusion and now it is dead.

Why is the West so tolerant? In China you can be imprisoned and tortured for being a Muslim. In Muslim countries you can be imprisoned and tortured for being an infidel. Western Civilization is more tolerant than any other civilization on earth. Many would attribute this tolerance to the destruction of strict social standards. If social standards forbid certain action, then society must be more tolerant when it destroys them… or so the logic goes.

But if this is true, then why are college campuses some of the most intolerant places in the United States. At UC Berkeley you can literally be whatever you want, yet when a conservative speaker comes to town the campus erupts into a show of violence and destruction. What was once a supposed haven of free speech has now become a depressing hellscape.

In his new book Speechless Michael Knowles correctly points out that there is no such thing as pure tolerance. A society must have standards. After all, the idea that there are no standards is itself a standard. Therefore, anyone who promotes a standard, such as the immorality of killing babies, cannot exist in this standardless system. In this light, it makes perfect sense that an Orthodox Jew such as Ben Shaprio, who holds himself to a high moral standard, would spark riots on college campuses. 

Right now conservatives are the most tolerant people in the United States. They don’t burn down cities and not a single mainstream individual supported the storming of the Capitol. And yet conservatives generally hold themselves to higher moral standards than liberals.

Despite the ire that is directed at them from the left, traditional standards are the epitome of tolerance. They create societal stability and meaning by promoting virtue and suppressing vice. This suppression of vice is not intolerant because vice is itself intolerant. A tolerant society can treat vice with nothing other than disdain, otherwise it allows the standardless intolerance of vice to take hold.

If a society is to promote virtue through a dedication to God, family, spouse, and country it is necessarily intolerant to some degree. Although they should not be considered criminals, those who do not believe in these great principles should not be given a share in entertainment, the education of youth, or the media. 

If social standards are necessary in society, then the West is tolerant because of its standards, not in spite of them. By inculcating strict religious virtue in individuals the West was able to promote tolerance by overcoming the disrespect for human life which characterizes barbarian societies. Today it staves off the return of the intolerant heathenism which exhibits hatred towards anyone who attempts to promote any moral standards.

Self-government requires taking responsibility for yourself and others. Taking responsibility requires self-regulation. Self-regulation requires moral standards. Moral standards require intolerance towards some ways of acting in the world. The West is free because of self government which must be preceded by strict moral standards. In the words of John Adams “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, and, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” There must be standards. Either we have no standards and become slaves to government or we accept standards and embrace the true freedom of overcoming wickedness.

Perhaps nothing has been scorned more in modern times than faith. It has been derided by Enlightenment philosophers from Rousseau to Voltaire and intellectuals have sympathized with Marx’s claim that it is the opium of the masses. To them faith is nothing more than the superstitious consumption of bread and adherence to pointless cultural taboos. This is no doubt a supreme caricature that could only be created by intellectuals who can’t help but revel in the powers of their considerable, though limited, intelligence. What they fail to recognize is that man cannot live without faith.

So what is faith? As much as it is derided by modern philosophers, the ancient Greeks thought it was essential. In the words of New York Post editor Sohrab Ahmari, they believed that “there must be some unchangeable being in whose absolute being all others participate (Plato), or some unchanged cause that is the ultimate cause of all other change (Aristotle).” Aristotle and Plato believed that in this “system of the supreme being” individuals would work to achieve virtue. They would do this by achieving their purpose (telos) in the world.

Christianity provided the necessary framework in which people could work to achieve their purpose through the use of their reason. It supplied the Greek philosophers with an answer to their question of who was the supreme being in the universe. The Jews and Christians believed that it was a benevolent and loving God who made man in his divine image.

 Of course it required faith to accept it. The Bible was the product of revelation, not reason and was thereby able to supply the deficiencies of human reason. This is the pure view of faith; submitting to a universal moral code that allows you to use your reason in order to fulfill your purpose in the world.

However, as I said before, man cannot live without faith. Therefore, the attempts of philosophers to get rid of faith has led to the spread of a new and perverse form of faith with no resemblance to Judeo-Christian morals. This faith relies on the idea that there is no objective truth in the universe. Rather it is nothing but a social construct. 

Those who make such a claim have one problem. If there is no objective truth, how can your statement that there is no objective truth be objectively true? Therefore proponents of nihilism must have faith. They must have the faith that nothing is certain except uncertainty.

The new generation is the byproduct of the perverse faith encroaching on the true faith. Men of science attempt to stave off nihilism by positing that scientific fact is the ultimate truth. Science popularizers such as Neil Degrasse Tyson love to repeat the poetic line that “we are stardust.” This merely masks the fact that science has no inherent morality. It cannot tell us how to act. Only knowledge within a moral framework can guide our actions.

In addition to this, young people shun church service and engage in pseudo-holy rituals such as yoga and meditation. None of these new personal paths to spirituality can fulfill the void which Christianity was meant to fulfill. They impose no moral code or guiding light. They merely stave off the inevitable realization that you believe in nothing. In the end one must choose. Either you have faith in an objective moral code which allows you to fulfill your telos or you have faith in meaninglessness and succumb to the pit of despair and death.

As with so much of our modern thinking, we are influenced by what Karl Marx called “The tradition of all the dead generations [which] weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.” Marx bemoaned the fact that so much of our thinking was influenced by past actors, which prevented radical change. Fortunately, the influence that weighs upon us provides us with more help than hindrance. It is a rich Greco-Roman tradition which has graced us with literature, philosophy, and governmental institutions. Therefore, in order to determine what justice is, it is important to look upon this tradition for wisdom and guidance.

In his sixth-century Institutes, the famous Emperor Justinian codified into Roman law our modern conception of justice. He defined it as “the constant and perpetual will to render each his due.” He believed that it was justice to give a man what he was owed. This definition was also consistent with Plato who defined justice in The Republic as, “doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own.” Plato believed that in order for a man to be just he had to fulfill his station in life. 

According to these two definitions it is just for a man to fulfill his station in life while giving each man what he is due. In this view, justice does not seem to require any material equality. After all, each man or woman has their own destiny to fulfill. Additionally, each person is due a different amount. It would be absurd to say that Titan of Industry J.D. Rockefeller was owed the same as a man who worked on the assembly line of a Ford factory. If this was distorted, it would actually be contrary to principles of justice. Each is given what he is owed based on his specific skill set, which is consistent with a Justinian conception of justice.

Therefore, material equality is not justice. Our Founding Fathers realized this. That is why they never tried to enforce material equality. Instead, they attempted to establish a respect for equal rights. In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson stated, “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.” In the eyes of our Founders, the whole purpose of government was to protect these natural rights. 

Because the Founders believed that these natural rights were a gift from God, they must have also thought that it was unjust to discriminate against people based upon arbitrary characteristics. This fundamental proposition established the principle of equality under the law, also known as the rule of law, which is the fundamental tenet of American equality. Thus, courts were set up to ensure that justice would be done. In the Federalist No. 78 Alexander Hamilton claimed, “the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits of its assigned authority.” Therefore, the judiciary was designed to respect the natural equality of mankind by preserving the natural rights that each individual is due.

Unfortunately, America would fall far short of this goal with such evils as slavery and Jim Crow segregation. However, famous abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass would call upon America to recognize its creed of equality and justice. In his fight for equality under the law, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” King and other great civil rights leaders harked back to our original notions of justice and equality. They believed that it is just for the government to treat people equally, because God has given everyone natural rights and natural value.

In the end, justice and equality are not bound to be at odds with one another. They are innately intertwined. Justice does not lie in material equality. It lies in giving each man what he is due. Given that each man is endowed by his Creator with innate value, it is just for the government to treat us equally before the law. It is also just that the government should constantly seek to honor our natural rights. This is our Founding creed and it has inspired countless heroes in their relentless pursuit of freedom, justice, and equality before the law.