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JAMES W. CEASER: Well if we have equality and Americans say we want to have equality,
why shouldn't we prize this? Is this the sort of equality that is consonant with American
principles or not?
AMY KASS: Well if you take your bearings from the Declaration of Independence, "all men
are created equal," I suspect that it doesn’t fit that idea. That idea seems to be coherent
with a kind of political equality but not the social equality that is enforced and insisted
upon in this society.
DIANA SCHAUB: And Vonnegut is quite aware of that distinction, the opening lines he
says they weren't only equal before God and the law, which I’d take to mean the original
Founding understanding of equality, instead he says they were equal every which way. The
fact that it takes the 211th, 12th, 13th amendments to the US Constitution in order to achieve
this new form of equality seems to me to indicate the distance between the original principles
and this distortion or perversion of those principles.
LEON KASS: Well just to be mischievous again, since I don't like one sided unanimity, it
took the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to in fact make good on the principle of equality
in those other respects. So you could say, look, the idea of “created equal, endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness,” that's very good. Suppose somebody says, “well look,
I’ve got the right to pursue happiness, but I don't have the opportunity to purse
happiness.” You say alright, we'll provide you with minimum public education at public
expense, we'll see that you’re vaccinated and get the minimum amount of health care
so you're not harmed by your lack of health, we’ll even provide you with unemployment
compensation if you cannot get a job so we help improve your opportunity to seek happiness.
And it turns out that the real obstacle to your obtaining happiness has to do with the
fact that you don't have the internal gifts to have happiness in a big sense. So somebody
will say look, this right to pursue happiness, to enjoy happiness, that's rather hollow unless
I really finally have the equipment to do so. And since you can't give me the equipment
to make it equal to the rest in the race of life, let’s not just level the playing field,
let's level the players, let's eliminate the game, and we can all go about our business
and watch handicap dancing on television.
JAMES W. CEASER: I’d say that equality of opportunity, even if you'd bring people up
to begin the race, is really a soft name for inequality. Equality of opportunity means
you start at a certain point, the race begins at a certain point, but then the race results
in vastly different outcomes and that seems to me the original meaning of equality. It’s
a kind of soft name for inequality, it's almost an aristocratic principle I would say or at
least it allows for great differences. I’m not sure that all Americans accept that. A
large number of people in Western society are sliding slowly towards the other view,
that it's the equality of results which is important. And I think that's what this story
points to that at some point, slowly, slowly, slowly, 200 amendments down the line, you're
going to get there, unless you realize the different character of those principles. And
not only the different character because it's one thing to say it's yours by tradition,
you would have to say why one was better than another. That still remains. Just because
it was the original one doesn’t mean it's the good one.
LEON KASS: Well look, uh… I’m sorry go ahead.
DIANA SCHAUB: I was going to in a way restate that. In the original conception equality
was linked to liberty and as long as you have liberty you'd have to accept a fair measure
of inequality of result.