Equality Is America’s Inheritance

Editor's Note

Is the destructive left driven by a maniacal desire for equality that can never be realized in nature, or by an authoritarian inequality that seeks to place a new elite atop our social hierarchy? In the spirit of Harry Jaffa and M.E. Bradford (whose classic essays on the subject initiated this exchange), Glenn Ellmers responds to Paul Gottfried, defending the position that equality, properly understood, is not the province of our enemy but the center of our own tradition.

I very much appreciate the thoughtful and gracious reply to my essay by Paul Gottfried. Unlike some of his allies in the paleoconservative movement, who (sadly and unhelpfully) are more interested in fragging people in their own foxhole for ideological deviationism, Gottfried recognizes the mortal danger from the Left, and is eager to make common cause in defending American constitutionalism and western civilization. Speaking on behalf of others in the Claremont orbit, I can say that we value and appreciate this productive relationship, which is simply a reflection of common sense. Allow me to respond to a few points in the spirit of friendly discussion. 

Gottfried writes:

Contrary to Ellmers’ contention, the Left is by no means committed to an ideal of inequality. The relationship that he observes has developed because what the Left is striving to do is unnatural, although sometimes balanced in practice by what Bertrand de Jouvenel styles “makeweights,” like inherited constitutional restraints and still operative custom. … Leftist utopian experiments end in tyranny because they are based on a rejection of what we know about human nature and because they treat the historical past not as a key to understanding social man but as an oppressive condition to be overcome.

It is interesting that Gottfried condemns the agenda of the Left for being “unnatural.” I fully agree that this essential concept, nature, is the most important standard we can use to judge what is sound or just in politics. I wish, however, that he had offered a few details to corroborate his blanket assertion that “the Left is by no means committed to an ideal of inequality.” I offered several specific examples to show that the real goal of the Leftist elite is not self-sufficiency for various victim groups (whom it shamelessly exploits) but rather its own privilege and power. As I wrote, 

Consider America’s two-tiered justice system, which is now more or less the official policy of the ruling class. Hunter Biden is effectively above the law, while Daniel Penny (the ex-Marine who defended fellow subway passengers from a deranged habitual criminal in New York City) is relentlessly prosecuted. The violence and mayhem of the BLM rioters gets a free pass, while the J6 prisoners endure indefinite pre-trial detention, in clear violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Is this a problem of equality or inequality?

Though he repeatedly uses the term, Gottfried never defines what he means by equality. Yet the whole argument—going back to the debate between Jaffa and Bradford fifty years ago—is about how to understand this idea. As I wrote in my essay, “The problem, of course, is that words can and do have different meanings. Things can be equal in some ways, and unequal in other ways.” Gottfried seems to reject my emphatic distinction between political equality of natural rights (what the American founders wanted to implement), and government-mandated preferences in the name of egalitarianism or equity (what the Left wants to implement). He denies my “distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of result” because a “government that focuses on the former will gradually move toward implementing the latter, when it becomes apparent that social hindrances stand in the way of achieving equal opportunity for everyone.” 

But no major American politician prior to the second half of the 20^th century ever believed that equal rights, or equality before the law, required government intervention to overcome “social hindrances.” Statesmen from Madison to Lincoln to Coolidge always understood the equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence as prohibiting government from creating favored and disfavored classes. Equality, at least until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, meant nothing more or less than equal treatment before the law. When Gottfried and other paleoconservatives reject this principle as doomed from the start, I always wonder, “What is the alternative?” Should the founders have given up on creating a legal system that makes no distinctions of persons? In favor of what? The whole point of the Revolution was to reject Europe’s divine-right monarchy and feudal caste system. Should the framers have created a new caste system in its place? 

Assuming that we can one day defeat the woke Left and restore America to some semblance of political sanity, what understanding of law would Gottfried wish the Justice Department to uphold? Should we continue to dispense legal privileges on the basis of race, gender, political affiliation, and wealth, or should the same rules apply to everyone? Without political equality, how does he propose that we fight Leftist tyranny, assert our natural rights, and defend the essential principle of consent? 

Gottfried responds to this point, somewhat indirectly, in his concluding paragraph. 

The right of a self-identified “people” to give consent is not necessarily derived from a belief in “the equality of all men.” It merely recognizes the equality of those who have been certified as politai (citoyens, Staatsbürger, cittadini) to exercise certain well-defined rights within a particular polity. The ancient Spartans bestowed on some of their residents the title of citizens omoioi (Equals) which certainly did not mean that whatever equality was enjoyed by Spartan citizens was open to everybody, including barbarians. The incorporation of popular consent into government also did not keep Athenians or Romans from owning slaves. The citizens of Geneva to whom Rousseau appealed were God-fearing Calvinists whose consent was needed to elect magistrates. But those “citizens” didn’t believe that because all human beings were created by the same Deity, they should all have the same right to become Genevan citizens or vote for Genevan magistrates.

Gottfried’s own phrases — “those who have been certified,” “bestowed on some of their residents” — give away the game. Who does the certifying and bestowing? Well, whoever happens to be in the ruling class, of course. The very examples Gottfried cites make my point: until 1776 it was always the elite who granted the citizens certain rights, and even decided who was or was not a citizen.  

The great achievement of the American Revolution was to insist that the people are sovereign, that they become citizens through a social compact, and they establish legitimate government which derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed.” This principle of popular sovereignty only works, and only makes sense, if human beings are equal by nature. No man — according to the political theory of the Declaration — has the right to rule another without his consent, because no class of men (even those with degrees from Harvard) are gods or angels, and no class of men (not even the “deplorables”) are beasts. All Americans are equally citizens, not because anyone “bestowed” this benefit but because the citizens themselves are the source of political authority. This certainly did not mean that the American Revolution was fought on behalf of all human beings everywhere, or that anyone in the world has a right to become an American at will. On the contrary, the universal natural rights asserted by the American revolutionaries were only claimed by and for “the good people of these colonies.” 

The older, conventional form of consent that Gottfried invokes — consent granted by custom as a privilege or dispensation of the rulers — is exactly what the leftist oligarchy claims for itself today. They do indeed, as Gottfried notes, reject human nature; and precisely for that reason feel justified in overseeing a regime of free-floating “social justice,” with favored and disfavored classes. Recovering the arguments for equal natural rights strikes me as the best, and indeed only, strategy for fighting this resurgent feudalism. 

This leads to me a final, more general point about tradition, inheritance, and culture in political life. Gottfried devotes several paragraphs of his essay to interesting historical reflections about how the Right, with very mixed success, has tried to preserve an inherited “organic” and “harmonious” society, which often lapsed into a quixotic longing for a “lost order” and made it almost powerless. He credits the Claremont Institute with being more politically successful precisely because (according to him), Harry Jaffa’s students have always been partly on the Left, and therefore in a better position to press the brakes. 

Let me offer a different take.

Inheritances, like reputations, are hard to build and easy to lose. It is almost a truism in America that great family wealth is dissipated by the third generation. Something similar seems to hold true in politics. What makes America unique is that our revolution did respect human nature; it cherished and tried to uphold the best of our traditions. Unlike every other revolution of the modern world, ours did not simply reject the past and descend into tyrannical self-destruction. Yet, it is important to recall as well that the founders understood themselves to be doing something unprecedented. This fruitful tension between the old and the new, between continuity and innovation, has certainly been part of what made the American experiment succeed for so long. 

To see only the tradition and the cultural continuity, therefore, is to miss half the story, and half of the success. I’ve interacted with many paleoconservatives who see, correctly, that our political inheritance has been squandered. They conclude that the founding must have been a mistake. But this is to forget that in America, most wealth isn’t inherited, it’s created. The same is true, in a way, of politics. The “abstract truths” of the Declaration can be (and have been) misunderstood and abused, of course. But they can also be a source of incredible vitality and rejuvenation. Principles based on the truth of human nature, unlike inheritances, can never be lost. They are always there to be called upon and vindicated anew. 

That insight, I believe, and not any leftism in Harry Jaffa’s scholarship, is what has made the Claremont Institute politically effective, and what — I hope and pray — may offer a path to reinvigorating the sacred cause of human liberty.