To an Ivy League Professor, Who Doesn't Understand "Equality"
A Columbia professor writes a dumb column, in anticipation of what will likely be humorously bad book
From the New York Times:
After all, Americans like to think of ourselves as a country that believes deeply and universally in equality for all. We tend to say, yes, the ideal that “all men are created equal” was radical when it was first set out in the Declaration of Independence, but that over time it has steadily become a given…
But throughout our history there have been voices that have contended that despite the abiding tension between political democracy and the forces of capitalism, we should learn to view inequality as something that is natural and even good.
I knew from the first sentence about “figures in and around Silicon Valley” that “‘All Men Are Created Equal’? Not Everyone Agrees” would be a jeremiad against conservative billionaires who think it’s okay to be billionaires. Then I realized Columbia University professor Dr. Kim Phillips-Fein was trying something more ambitious, railing against the observation that LeBron James was born with a better shot at the NBA than the rest of us. Her first idea is to make verbalizing this obvious truth villainous, citing as a guilty party John Adams, who said that “to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties” is a “fraud.”
The second idea in the Phillips-Fein column is even funnier. She lays out the basics of the American social contract, namely that we agree to tolerate inequality of outcomes provided we have equal opportunity, then not only denounces that too as villainous, but acts like she’s the first person to put it into words.
I burst out laughing at this passage:
