In the fullness of time, whoever is writing the story of the American experiment will marvel over the fact that the United States never understood itself and as a result, was eventually destroyed in a struggle with itself. A land with vast resources and a capable people could never move past a central problem that stepped off the Mayflower to start the American story. That problem is how can you build a society that derives equality from inequality?

At every step in the American story, we see this conflict. One the one hand, what drives the efforts of the American people is the desire to equalize not only American society, but the society of man. On the other hand, there is the grudging acknowledgment that what lies between here and the egalitarian paradise if the impenetrable barrier called the natural inequality of man. Despite the unconquerable truth of the human condition, what drives America is the desire to overcome it.

This conflict is right there in the founding myths. The colonists rebelled against the symbol of hierarchy and innate inequality, the King of England. They did so on the grounds that all men have the same rights. It is right there in the powerful opening of the Declaration of Independence, perhaps the greatest celebration of egalitarianism ever written, but written by a man who was the gold standard of both the natural inequality of man and the necessity of hierarchy.

This contradiction is right there in the life of Thomas Jefferson. He was a man of aristocratic stock, born into a wealthy family. He was living proof that Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally. He supported the redistribution of land to the poor, despite the fact he was a wealthy planter and slave owner. Despite the reality of his life, he was also capable of expressing the egalitarian spirit in such powerful and direct language that it continues to haunt the nation he helped create.

Modern America, the Global American Empire, is the product of the innate American egalitarianism, but also the willingness to use violence in the unequal relationship between America and the rest of the world. The regular speeches we hear from politicians about America’s role in the world would be familiar to Thucydides. On the one hand those speeches are a form of the funeral oration of Pericles and on the other hand the frank dialogue with the people of Melos.

The present crisis of America is the product of this great contradiction. In his majority opinion in Student for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, Chief Justice John Roberts struggles with this very question. Much of the opinion, in fact, is a recitation of how the country has struggled with this question. Often, Roberts laments that the court has failed to live up to those ideals of equality, but then he acknowledges that impenetrable barrier called the natural inequality of man.

In his discussion of Plessy, the case that established the doctrine of separate but equal, Roberts argues that despite the intent and the remedies to address defects in the doctrine, the result was institutional inequality in education. Roberts writes, “the
inherent folly of that approach—of trying to derive equality from inequality—soon became apparent.” The remedy was to scrap it entirely in the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision.

Note that in a 237-page decision lamenting the history of discrimination and challenges in addressing it, the central problem lies in just one sentence. You cannot derive equality from inequality. If Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally, a truth not only visible to the casual eye, but supported by mountains of data, then the equality of man is impossible and any effort to achieve it is folly. Despite this immutable truth, the court continues its quest to reach the egalitarian paradise.

Right there is the beating heart of the current crisis. For going on three generations now, the moral arbiter of America society, the Supreme Court, has demanded that we press ahead with a project it knows is impossible. The moral regime that makes the open society as the highest good and discrimination as the worst evil, which grew from the Brown decision, is all about finding, at long last, some way over or around that impenetrable barrier called the natural inequality of man.

The moralizing is clear in the text of the decision. Roberts often blurs the lines between legal discrimination and general discrimination, because to make such a distinction suggests the latter is acceptable under the right conditions. Instead, the starting place is the assertion that discrimination is always immoral, but for now certain exceptions must be made until we work out a few things. Affirmative action, for example, is a temporary fix until equality is achieved.

Think about how many social problems could easily be solved by simply acknowledging that impenetrable barrier called the natural inequality of man. If the court said that Harvard is a private college and so it can admit who it likes for any reason it likes, this case never sees a courtroom. Public universities, on the other hand, must admit everyone that meets the objective criteria for admissions. Debates over college admissions would vanish instantly.

Simply acknowledging objective reality about human beings would solve many of the problems in present day America, but it is impossible. The belief in the equality of man is too powerful with the managerial class. John Roberts and his staff wrote 237-pages of text to cover over “it is folly trying to derive equality from inequality.” Since the middle of the last century, all efforts have been mustered to defeat that simple truth, but it remains that impenetrable barrier called the natural inequality of man.

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