The Power of Equality

Small things can tell us as much as big things. I recently bought a book of first-class postage stamps with an American flag design. Glancing at them something leapt out at me: the word “Equality.” The series actually has four different words: “Freedom,” “Liberty,” Equality,” and “Justice.” Cleverly, the words are juxtaposed with the word “forever” which indicates that the stamps will be valid for first-class postage “forever,” no matter what the rate becomes.

This insurance agent and blogger writes about being unexpectedly moved by the simple, patriotic message of the stamps. I couldn’t quite feel that way, though: the word “Equality” stuck in my craw.

“Equality,” in this day and age, generally expresses the liberal-left notions of “social justice” and equality of results. (The word “Justice” on the stamps is similarly problematic.) It conjures up a Civil Rights Era image of blacks struggling for “equal rights,” but in actuality is used to justify coercive governmental measures for empowering nonwhite groups and collectively liberalizing society. For instance, a commentator I heard on NPR defending the Obamacare birth control mandate justified it in terms of the “equality” it provided, which to her trumped objections based on religious freedom.

Though the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal” does give the word resonance for Americans, Jefferson’s “equality” was minimalist, indicating a certain basic common nature possessed by all humans that justified certain forms of equality under the law. Balint Vazsonyi, in America’s Thirty Years War (Regnery, 1998), correctly saw the more radical interpretation of “equality” – as in the “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” of the French Revolution –  as an un-American notion:

Note that I translate the French slogan ‘Égalité’ as ‘Egality,’ and not as ‘Equality.’ Webster’s Dictionary tells us that egality is ‘an extreme social and political leveling.’ Our word ‘egalitarian’ confirms that definition. The process of leveling is worlds apart from equality in the affairs of man, which was the aspiration of the Round Table….

Egality is the elimination of differences. Since people are different, only force can cover up the differences, and then only temporarily. Once force is no longer applied, the differences reappear…. (p. 37)

I note that Vazsonyi specifically referred to the black-white achievement gap in his discussion:

America’s balance sheet is exceptionally rich and positive, partly as a result of its demographic composition. Different countries harbor variable proportions of people with aspirations – from near-zero to very high. But all who undertook the journey to America from the four corners of the world had aspirations of some kind, making America’s “aspiration density” the highest in the world. It would be higher still, had all newcomers undertaken the journey of their own free will. But that was not the case. And that, more than any other single factor, created a rift that time alone will heal. (p. 38-9).

I am sorry to say that “equality” is the official driving ideal in the United States today; we traditionalist Westerners who do not accept it are the dissidents. The notion of equality drives the Obama administration’s open contempt for regular Americans, and the law, in its efforts to suppress Arizona’s efforts to deal with her illegal alien problem; and it drives the homosexualization of our society, now proceeding at an astonishing pace with almost no thoughtful opposition. But the more equality is achieved, the worse any remaining inequality is said to be, a sentiment expressed in a song I enjoyed in my college days (I won’t link it since I don’t endorse the repulsive messages of the band):

The power of equality
Is not yet what it ought to be
It fills me up like a hollow tree
The power of equality

(The performers of the song seemed to think that the U.S. was in danger of being taken over by the Ku Klux Klan, and that their hedonistic – and admittedly at times pretty good – music was the antidote….)

But why, why is the idea so powerful? It is obviously nonsense to believe that all people have equal abilities and equal aspirations. Even if “equality of results” were desirable, it’s clear that the growing “diversity” of our society is leading to growing inequality and stratification at every level. Yet the movement demanding equality barrels ahead, and few dare challenge it.

Update: I notice that the blogger I linked to, who sells health and life insurance, is in favor of the contraceptive mandate. Since it’s possible he’ll read my post, I’ll just mention that my objection to the mandate has to do with the morality of collectively-provided birth control presented as a “health” issue. I realize that supporters of the mandate argue in a technical way that a purchaser of insurance, individual or corporate, isn’t directly “paying” for contraception and of course is not required to use contraception himself or herself. I think this is a morally obtuse view, but don’t have time to compose a detailed objection. Maybe another time.

Irish-American Railroad Songs

When I was a kid we had an album called Songs of the Railroad. It’s available as an MP3 download on Amazon. It is amazing that record companies used to churn out product after product like this, and presumably make a profit with them. Who the heck were the Merrill Jay Singers? But they did a fine job. Pick a popular song or a folk song from before 1965, and go on YouTube – you will almost always find multiple versions.

Songs like this mean a lot to me, and I want to pass down as many of them as I can to my child.

Here are a couple of the songs from that album, done by other artists.

The Tarrier Song

And when next payday came around
Jim Goff a dollar short was found
When he asked, “What for?” came this reply
“You were docked for the time you were up in the sky.”

Paddy on the Railway

The version I was familiar with had the lyrics:

In eighteen hundred and forty three, ’twas then I met sweet Biddy McGee
An elegant wife she’s been to me, while workin’ on the railway.
……
In eighteen hundred and forty seven, sweet Biddy McGee she went to heaven
She left one child, she left eleven to work upon the railway.

I notice sometimes on YouTube that a commenter on a song I was looking for will say something like “I’m only 15 and I love this music!” The commenter then says that kids his own age all listen to Justin Bieber, whom he despises. I see this exact comment often enough that I wonder if it’s fake, but I hope there are actually 15-year-olds discovering the older music. Surely they are starved for something better than what they’re being served?

Laying rails across America. What was it all for?

It’s a Cartoon World…But It Was Real

It may be unproductive to overindulge in nostalgia, but nostalgia is undeniably at the heart of the traditionalist project. We recognize the things that are precious to us, and realize that these things exist only because of the people and culture which created them. As our society becomes increasingly broken and degraded, seeing things as they were in the past helps us to imagine how they could be in the future. Perhaps I am a bit like William Morris, whose anarchist utopia depicted in News From Nowhere looked suspiciously, and implausibly, like a medieval agricultural society. When I try to imagine America 50 or 100 years from now – and I have no doubt that there will exist a revived, European America at least somewhere within our present borders – it looks strangely like the America of 1910 (or whatever other period may be inspiring me at the time). I know it won’t really be like anything I can imagine, but at a minimum, surely, there will be free, dignified white people, married couples, modest clothing, architecture reflecting a sense of beauty and humanity, clean streets…and in this sense, how can the future possibly not look more like 1911 than 2011?

I was in Columbus, Ohio recently to see some friends and happened to see an exhibit at the Ohio State library on a cartoonist named Billy Ireland. I am no expert on cartoon art, but certain comics and cartoons have exerted a powerful magic on my imagination – Schulz’s Peanuts, for instance, or Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby – and there is the occasional contemporary graphic novel or cartoon that excites me; I even like Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, despite its liberal orientation. I was intrigued, therefore, to learn about this cartoonist.

Now, a digression: I must say it was incongruous to be asked to sign a guest book by a Somali woman clad in black and wearing a hijab (who then went back to talking, in her native language, on her cell phone in a loud voice). The library there seems to be employing a lot of such women, reflecting Columbus’s status as one of the main Somali-settled towns in the U.S. It’s hard to imagine a person less likely to have any appreciation for the old-time America depicted by Billy Ireland than this young African Muslim lady, and hard to imagine a figure more likely to spoil the effect of the exhibit.

But I was determined to enjoy it, and enjoy it I did. It is the world of Penrod all over again – the Eastern American city of a century ago, with a sense of community, order, and local distinction that we are so lacking in today. Portrayed by charming and brilliantly drawn cartoons by the local cartoonist for the Columbus Dispatch, Billy Ireland (1880-1935). He is described as follows on the exhibit’s webpage:

Billy Ireland (1880-1935), a native of Chillicothe, Ohio, was hired by the Columbus Dispatch shortly after his high school graduation in 1898. A self-taught cartoonist, he worked for the Dispatch until his death and was famous both for his editorial cartoons and for his Sunday feature The Passing Show. Ireland had several books published, and he mentored many younger cartoonists including Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles. He turned down syndication contracts and several job offers from larger metropolitan newspapers, saying that he did not want to leave Columbus–he just wanted to get back to Chillicothe. Ireland’s affection for his home state is reflected in his work.

Ireland was nationally known and was admired by such people as Will Rogers and James Thurber, but realized that he thrived best in his local milieu.

I attach a scanned image of one installment of The Passing Show. If the reader clicks the image he will be able to read most of it, although regrettably my scan is not very satisfactory. (If anyone knows a better way to do thumbnail links on WordPress, please let me know.) For more images of Ireland’s work, take a look at the following blog entry. Here’s another one.

"The Passing Show," Columbus Dispatch, 1910

The entire piece, depicting a variety of completely-forgotten events from a particular town over a century ago, is infused with the texture of American life of that time, and shows the feeling of community that we had when we were a much more homogeneous, locally-based country. One can imagine a reader poring over the column and taking in its contents in several viewings throughout the day: not the way most of us read today. Even the title cartoon, showing a round-headed character (A self-portrait of the cartoonist, I think, but there is also a visual allusion that escapes me) paddling a lady down the river in a canoe, reflects a feeling of ease and leisure difficult to imagine on TV or the news today. Then there is a call for a school levy to provide “decent schools for our children” -  in this largely white, newspaper-reading community one could have normal discussions on how to improve the schools without the discussion being dominated by violence, drugs, pregnancy, and students who don’t speak English. Note too that the city happily used Christopher Columbus as its paternal symbol.

We have a long, humorous account of an outdoor boxing match that got caught in the rain, with kidding references to local individuals who were present. We see the Prohibition movement underway with a Search and Seizure Law, jokingly rendered “The Shirts and Caesar Law.” Use of automobiles is booming: two characters called “The Jedge and Jerry” comment that “The high cost of livin’ seems to effect everything except the Sunday mornin’ attendance at the fillin’ stations!”, and the cartoonist also notes: “We can remember that the whole town thought it was positively sinful when the richest man in town paid $150.00 for a new Columbia bicycle.”

There was, of course, plenty of social turmoil, both international and domestic. The panel alludes to the U.S. Congress’s “war tasks” – a reference to operations in Nicaragua? Ireland had moderately progressive instincts; he was said to have helped drive the Ku Klux Klan out of Columbus by mocking their attire:

He was also a supporter of woman suffrage, making the seemingly irrefutable argument: “These queer looking birds can vote, but your mother can’t!” (The cartoon may be worth noting as an excellent example of the power of the progressive argument, which points out the individual injustices created by an existing practice. The problem is that the larger structural or hierarchical benefits of that practice often get ignored.)

Who could disagree?

Besides the more comfortable, leisurely sense of life reflected in Ireland’s work, what stands out is his general decency and  assumption that his audience shares his values. For us, living in a culture that honors Lady Gaga and Michael Vick, this is a good reminder of how much better it could be.

The booklet that comes with the exhibit (on for about another two weeks) summarizes the cartoonist’s legacy as follows:

During the twentieth century, much of America developed into a homogenized nation of superhighways, shopping malls and fast food outlets. Those things which made cities and towns unique were often ignored and many people lost their sense of place and history. Billy Ireland was certain where his roots were, deep in the soil of Ohio, and he felt no need to apologize for that. His friends testified that he left the world a better place. He entertained his readers, fought for causes he believed in, attempted to preserve nature’s beauties, and he was a generous and loyal friend. Billy Ireland was a cartoonist who changed his community for the better and inspired others to follow his career. (Ireland of the Dispatch, Columbus: The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum,  2010, p. 17)

I think he belongs on the list of our American heroes.