Example research essay topic: Men Are Created Equal Feminist Movement - 2,173 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

When Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, set out to enunciate the philosophical principles underlying the American Revolution the principles of 76, as later generations would call them thats the one he put down first, as the foundation and justification of all the rest. Equality not, as one might expect, liberty. The original draft of the Declaration highlights the importance of equality still more clearly. The final and better-known version states: 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. But what Jefferson originally wrote was this: We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable: that all men are created equal and independent; that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As far as I can tell, the wording was changed for stylistic reasons rather than substantive ones.

The final draft does flow more smoothly. But the original draft is more philosophically precise. By contrast with the final draft, where equality and liberty are presented simply as two fundamental principles, with their relation to one another left unclear, in the original draft the value of liberty is explicitly said to be secondary to, and derivative from, the value of equality. Yet we who regard ourselves as the inheritors of the principles of 76 do not speak as often, or as warmly, about equality. We talk, instead, about liberty; we call ourselves libertarians, not egalitarians. We dont give our books titles like The Constitution of Equality, or For a New Equality, or How I Found Equality in an Unequal World.

By contrast, those who do most often invoke the language of equality in contemporary political discourse tend be the enemies of the principles of 76, as we understand those principles. How could equality be our ideal, if it is also theirs? The answer, of course, is that we need to specify: equality of what? equality in what respect?

Our egalitarian opponents favor socioeconomic equality sometimes interpreted as equality of socioeconomic opportunity, sometimes interpreted as equality of socioeconomic outcome. (The difference between the two becomes increasingly blurred these days as inequality of outcome is taken as prima facie evidence of inequality of opportunity. ) What sort of equality do we stand for? It is sometimes suggested that the libertarian version of equality is legal equality equality before the law. And it is certainly true that the ideal of legal equality has been invoked by libertarians against various programs of a socioeconomically egalitarian stripe (such as labor laws and anti-discrimination laws that grant to employees, whilst denying to employers, the right to terminate the employer-employee relationship at will). But legal equality as such is too limited to constitute the libertarian ideal. Just as socioeconomic egalitarians find legal equality inadequate because (in Anatole Frances memorable phrase) it forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, so libertarians likewise would not be greatly cheered if the injustice of military conscription, for example, were extended from one sex to both; this would be an advance in legal equality, but hardly an advance in liberty. As Murray Rothbard writes: [T]he justice of equality of treatment depends first of all on the justice of the treatment itself.

Suppose, for example, that Jones, with his retinue, proposes to enslave a group of people. Are we to maintain that "justice" requires that each be enslaved equally? And suppose that someone has the good fortune to escape. Are we to condemn him for evading the equality of justice meted out to his fellows? [ 1 ] By the same token, equality of liberty falls short of capturing the libertarian ideal. A world in which everyone had the same tiny amount of freedom would not be a libertarian one.

We may speak, as Herbert Spencer did, of a law of equal freedom, but that law specifies not just liberty's equalization but its maximization; its not the equality part thats doing the real work. The law of equal freedom treats equality as, at most, a constraint on, rather than as the foundation of, maximum liberty. I say "at most" because equal liberty is arguably a logical consequence of maximum liberty rather than any kind of constraint on it. To quote Rothbard once more: If someone wants to urge every man to buy a car, he formulates his goal in that way " Every man should buy a car " rather than in such terms as: "All men should have equality in car buying. .".. Spencer's Law of Equal Freedom is redundant. For if every man has freedom to do all that he wills, it follows from this very premise that no man's freedom has been infringed or invaded...

The concept of "equality" has no rightful place in the "Law of Equal Freedom, " being replaceable by the logical quantifier "every. "The "Law of Equal Freedom" could well be renamed "The Law of Total Freedom. "[ 2 ] But if neither legal equality nor equality of liberty is sufficient for a free society as we understand it, in what sense can it be from our equal creation that we derive our right to liberty? For the answer to this question we must turn from Jefferson to Jefferson's source, John Locke, who tells us exactly what "equality" in the libertarian sense is: namely, a condition wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection... [ 3 ] In short, the equality that Locke and Jefferson speak of is equality in authority: the prohibition of any "subordination or subjection" of one person to another. Since any interference by A with Bs liberty constitutes a subordination or subjection of B to A, the right to liberty follows straightforwardly from the equality of "power and jurisdiction. "As Locke explains: [B]end all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions... And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. [ 4 ] This is a notable pre-Kantian statement of the principle that human beings are not to be treated as mere means to the ends of others. (Observe, too, how Locke and Jefferson both invoke independence as a corollary of, or a gloss on, equality in authority. ) We can now see how socioeconomic equality and legal equality both fall short of the radicalism of Lockean equality.

For neither of those forms of equality calls into question the authority of those who administer the legal system; such administrators are merely required to ensure equality, of the relevant sort, among those administered. Thus socioeconomic equality, despite the bold claims of its adherents, does no more to challenge the existing power structure than does legal equality. Both forms of equality call upon that power structure to do certain things; but in so doing, they both assume, and indeed require, an inequality in authority between those who administer the legal framework and everybody else. The libertarian version of equality is not circumscribed in this way. As Locke sees, equality in authority entails denying to the legal systems administrators and thus to the legal system itself any powers beyond those possessed by private citizens: [T]he execution of the law of nature is in that state put into every man's hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation... For in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do. [ 5 ] Lockean equality involves not merely equality before legislators, judges, and police, but, far more crucially, equality with legislators, judges, and police.

By this standard Murray Rothbard, in his advocacy of anarcho-capitalism, turns out to have been one of the most consistent and thoroughgoing egalitarian theorists of all time. As the author of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, Rothbard might very well turn over in his grave to hear himself so described; but, as we shall see, what Ayn Rand used to say of capitalism applies a fortiori to equality: equality, properly understood, is in many ways an unknown ideal unknown both to its defenders and to its detractors. Since Locke's day, libertarians have been divided into two camps. Some, like Rothbard, have embraced Lockean equality as an absolute standard to which any legal system should be held. Others, following Locke himself, have regarded pure Lockean equality as an unworkable constraint on a legal system, and so have favored surrendering just enough Lockean equality to make practicable the legal protection of the Lockean equality that remains.

My own sympathies lie with the first group; in my view, Locke's arguments for the incompatibility of Lockean equality with a functioning legal order all commit either the fallacy of composition or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. [ 6 ] (For example, from the claim everybody should submit his disputes to a third-party judge, Locke fallaciously infers there should be a third-party judge to whom everyone submits his disputes, which is like moving from everyone likes at least one TV show to theres at least one TV show that everyone likes. ) But even if the second group were right, and it were necessary to give up some Lockean equality in order to protect the rest, it would at least still be true that any powers unique to government that go beyond what is strictly necessary for a working legal system constitute an unjustified affront to human equality. Both groups seek, at any rate, to minimize departures from Lockean equality. Hence libertarians have traditionally directed their ire against the inequalities in authority that exist between, on the one hand, the average person, and, on the other hand, the legal systems administrators (as well as their cronies, the private beneficiaries of government privilege). As Antony Flew writes: [W]hat the various ruling elites determine to be fitting... may or may not turn out to be equality between all those who are so dependent. But as between those who give and those who receive the commands...

there can of course be no equality at all. [ 7 ] Wendy McElroy has traced the interplay within the feminist movement of three distinct egalitarian ideals: a "mainstream" ideale quality before the land two more "radical" ideals socioeconomic equality, which McElroy identifies as a socialist or Marxist ideal, and what I have been calling equality in authority, which McElroy identifies as an individualist or libertarian ideal: [T]he meaning of equality differs within the feminist movement. Throughout most of its history, American mainstream feminism considered equality to mean equal treatment under existing laws and equal representation within existing institutions. The focus was not to change the status quo in a basic sense, but rather to be included within it. The more radical feminists protested that existing laws and institutions were the source of injustice and, thus, could not be reformed... [T]heir concepts of equality reflected this. To the individualist, equality was a political term referring to the protection of individual rights; that is, protection of the moral jurisdiction every human being has over his or her own body. To socialist-feminists, it was a socio-economic term...

While Marxist class analysis uses the relationship to the mode of production as its point of reference, libertarian class analysis uses the relationship to the political means as its standard. Society is divided into two classes: those who use the political means, which is force, to acquire wealth or power and those who use the economic means, which requires voluntary interaction. The former is the ruling class which lives off the labor and wealth of the latter. [ 8 ] From a libertarian standpoint, socioeconomic egalitarians turn out, embarrassingly enough, to be apologists for the ruling class. That libertarian resistance to socioeconomically egalitarian proposals is itself based on an egalitarian ideal is seldom recognized. It is nonetheless true. The only socioeconomic egalitarian I know of who recognises this is Amartya Sen; yet Sen is the exception that proves the rule.

For he too misses the point: he glosses libertarian equality as equality of liberty, an interpretation weve already seen to be inadequate. Here is how Sen sees the issue: Not only are libertarian thinkers... seen as anti-egalitarian, but they are diagnosed as anti-egalitarian precisely because of their overriding...

Research essay sample on Men Are Created Equal Feminist Movement