#peikoff

Quick Note on Peikoff's Value

Tamerlan, Dzhokhar, and Nidal

...take egalitarianism in its commonest interpretation. "Differences in income are bad; inequalities as such are unjust". Why? Some people give whole complex arguments, but the typical egalitarian says, "That´s obvious". It doesn´t make any difference what the cause is of the inequalities, or the effects; it doesn´t make any difference in what they are unequal; it´s just intrinsically bad. I took a philosophy class many, many years ago, and the professor put before the class this situation: "Imagine we have one society where there are tremendous differences in income from lowest to highest, and another society where everybody has an identical income, which is, however, lower than the lowest one in the first society. Which one", he asked, "is the morally superior society?" And I was the sole person in the class of about fifty who voted for the first society. The rest of the class - and this was a graduate course in ethics - considered this simply out of the question, "Equality is intrinsically good, and therefore, it´s much better that we all starve as brothers."

What the moderns actually believe in and seek to accomplish is not the exhaltation of an absurdity above the power of science, but the sabotage of science; not the adoration of das Nichts, but the defeat of this world; not human abasement as a desperate plea to the gods, but human abasement for the sake of human abasement. [...] "Modern culture" is institutionalized hatred of the good. "The good", in this context, includes reason, reality, and man. This rebellion is not merely skepticism, which is an ancient theory that denies that knowledge is possible; or pessimism, which denies that success is possible; or cynicism, which denies that virtue is possible; or decadence, which settles wearily for festering disintegration; or even sadism, which manifactures human pain. The term that captures twentieth century culture; the term which includes all of these and every similar, value-annulling doctrine and attitude; the term that names the modern soul is: nihilism.

In the nineteenth century, men entered the race of life at different starting points, according to whatever assets they were given or had created; fairness, it was held, is men's equal freedom to run. In the twentieth century, we heard that the race is only fair if everyone, through government aid, starts at the same point. Now, in the twenty-first century, we hear that, to be fair, the men leading the race must have their legs broken so that the losers can catch up.

The precursors of today's egalitarians preached equality in theory, but always postponed its practice. For example, the medieval Christians and the modern Communists, each in their own fashion, held out as their goal and result the final triumph of the deserving and the banishing of the wicked. In this cause, they righteously rewarded their supporters and punished their enemies; they elevated those who knew the truth and cast down those who did not. In short, they were staunch defenders of moral and epistemological inequality - a fact expressed in the political hierarchies prominent in both movements. Both did champion the value of equality. But the Christians preached it as an ideal realizable only in the next life, and the Marxists as an ideal realizable only in the ever-receding final stage of Communism. Each group understood that the end of the "better" would mean the end of their movement. The egalitarians have a different viewpoint. They want equality now, with all the zeros that entails. It has been said that the greens are Communism reborn, merely a name change for the reds. But this is not true. The egalitarian movement rejects certain of the fundamentals of the Communist mind. It does not work for or promise a better life for a better man - but rather no life for any of us. The true color of the environmentalist movement is not red or green, but black.

Besides inequality of wealth, there are many sorts of inequality that egalitarians in various areas condemn as unfair and seek to remove. Today's ethnic leaders, who regard opponents of the new fairness as racist, seek not old-fashioned civil rights, already long gained, but equality for their minorities in regard to all the values enjoyed by the majority. Feminists seek equality with males - in income, status, power- through liberation from 'sexism'. Age activists, fighting 'ageism', want equality with the young. The physically handicapped, fighting 'ableism', want equality with the healthy. The ugly, fighting 'looksism', want equality with the beautiful. The multiculturalists, fighting 'imperialism' want the West to acknowledge that its culture is no better than any other. The animal rights activists, fighting 'speciesism', want us to recognize that man is no more important than any other creature. So any standard or practice that divides man (or creatures in general) into better or worse, winners or losers, must be eliminated - for example, offering merit pay, awarding the Nobel Prize, or holding beauty contests. The only way to eliminate all these injustices, said the egalitarian former director of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, is to 'stamp out the concept of the better'.

Here is a way to identify, in emotional terms, the appeal of each of the Big Three [Philosophers] to their champions throughout the centuries. Plato appeals to soaring idealism scornful of the practical. Aristotle appeals to joyful realism on earth. Kant appeals to rage.