Mr. Lipton of San Francisco has been a newspaperman and Army Historian whose articles have appeared in numerous magazines.
How futile are words among those who do not understand their meaning!
“We all declare for liberty,” said Lincoln, “but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.” Nor do we all mean the same thing by our words for those two important aspects of liberty: rights and equality.
A hundred and thirty odd years ago young Benjamin Disraeli was standing for Parliament. This grandson of a Venetian Jew would one day become Prime Minister of Queen Victoria’s England. But that was far in the future, and his immediate task was to defeat a liberal opponent. He told the solid country folk of his constituency: “I prefer the liberties we now enjoy to the liberalism they profess, and find something better than the Rights of Man in the Rights of Englishmen.”
There were, of course, many in Disraeli’s day as there are today to see in these words a lack of compassion; here was a young man obviously unconcerned with the rights of anyone but an Englishman. Anyone referring in our time to the “rights of Englishmen” (or of Americans) surely would be denounced for negating or downgrading the rights of less-developed peoples of Asia or Africa or South America.
What Disraeli Knew
Now, none of this would be true. To begin with, Disraeli —more than most men — knew the meaning of words. He knew and understood the ideas inherent in the history of his Jewish ancestors and also was well versed in the history and traditions of Anglo-Saxon England. Aside from his political ambitions, he was a writer of brilliant, witty, and incisive political and social novels which explored the foibles, weaknesses, and strengths of the society and politics of the England of his time.
Although Disraeli doubtless would have favored extending the “rights of man” to men everywhere, he knew that this would mean little until all men agreed on what those rights were. To a Zulu chief in Africa, who could order a thousand men to leap over a cliff to demonstrate his power, the phrase would have a meaning not understood by Disraeli’s constituents. Nor would it have meant the same thing to a French revolutionary leader like Robespierre or St. Just, who wrote about the “rights of man” with one hand while signing his daily quota of warrants for the execution of “enemies of the state” with the other.
Every dictator or king or emperor professes to rule for the benefit of the people. For instance, “divine right of kings” meant to the people of medieval Europe that the king was ordained by God to protect their rights and thus possessed a divine right to rule. That few kings ever concerned themselves with the rights of their subjects is quite another matter. History, of course, records that the kingly attitude usually ranged from negligence and carelessness to the most callous brutality. Still, the theory was the “rights of man,” in a different costume.
All of this, Disraeli knew. So it was natural that he preferred the “Rights of Englishmen” to the “Rights of Man.” He was taking nothing away from the savage power of a Zulu chief or a revolutionary leader or an advocate of absolute monarchy or dictatorship. Nothing he could say would influence them. But he knew that the “Rights of Man” was too general and meant too much to mean anything. On the other hand, the “Rights of Englishmen” was a specific term, tied to the history of a single people.
Magna Charta — 1215
What, then, did it mean? To anyone conversant with English history, its meaning was clear. An Englishman’s rights had been wrested from King John by the Barons on a memorable June day in 1215 at Runnymede when they forced him to sign the Magna Charta. True, these were rights at first to be granted the nobility versus the crown. Yet, in the ensuing centuries, they were broadened to more nearly encompass all Englishmen.
Even as civilized a nation as France had no history of successful parliamentarian struggle against the ruling monarch. But the England of that day could look back to a Parliament that had revolted against Charles I, demanding the right to tax as the representatives of the people, and insisting that this was the people’s right, and not the right of the royal house.
But Disraeli also would have known that while these “Rights” extended to most Englishmen, they by no means extended to all of them; history in its boundless inconsistency had placed certain political restrictions on English Catholics and Jews. Disraeli, whose father was a convert to the Church of England, could avoid those restrictions; but most Jews and Catholics could not. One of Disraeli’s historic functions would be to help make these rights uniform, to aid in the fight to apply them to all Englishmen.
In the Name of Equality
Within the category of rights, another word which has rung down the historical corridors is “equality.” We are destined in our time to hear much more of it. This word has struck a chord in the imaginations and has been used by all kinds of men from the most admirable to the most vicious. The Chinese Communists proclaimed it as their legions poured through the mountain passes to slaughter peaceful Tibetan villagers. Peaceful men have urged it upon their neighbors, and violent men have shouted it as they squeezed the triggers of scatter guns. Nearly eighty years ago, socialistically-inclined Edward Bellamy wrote about a utopian society of the future in a novel entitled Looking Backward. And the word he chose as title for its sequel, written nine years later, was Equality.
The meaning of the same word to different men can best be judged by comparing the ideas of two historically important figures: the Virginia aristocrat, Thomas Jefferson, and the French lawyerturned-revolutionary, Maxmillien de Robespierre. What did “equality” mean to each of them? It was a word they both liked and often used. But a glance at the slogans commonly associated with their names will show that they were talking and writing about two different things.
Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant stylist but not always a clear writer, wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”
The French Revolutionary slogan promoted by Robespierre and his followers was: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”
However, Jefferson then went on to point out that all men were created equal in the exercise of certain rights: Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness. Governments, in his words, were instituted to protect those rights; by implication, that was where government’s legitimate function began and ended. Quite obviously, he did not believe that all men were equal. The logic of Jefferson’s position was that men were born with differing strengths and weaknesses, and that even in such external conditions as material well-being, some were born luckier than others. Equality, in this sense, is concerned with the rights of people, and not with people per se. They are equal because these rights belong to all men, not just to some of them.
Fraternal Equality Under the Guillotine
The equalitarian concept inherited from the French Revolution—from men like Robespierre — is different in kind as well as degree. This equality is fraternal, and “fraternity” in the trinitarian slogan of the French Revolutionists became a meaningless extra word. It meant what it said: All men are equal. This is meaningless because it is untrue. Men are not equal. Some are born with greater intelligence than others. Some have mechanical aptitudes while others have verbal aptitudes. The simple fact is that the son of a Soviet commissar is born luckier than the son of a Mongolian herdsman.
Now, if anyone had the choice under which system of equality to live, he would do well to consider a fascinating historical contradiction. Contrary to what one might suppose, the lives and liberties of men have been far more secure where their individual inequalities have been admitted and where they were “equal” only insofar as they were subject to the law. Take, for instance, a farmer in Virginia during colonial revolutionary times when Thomas Jefferson was governor of the state and measure his lot against that of a peasant during the time of Robespierre. The farmer may not have been the intellectual equal of Jefferson. He may have lacked many of the material comforts that Jefferson had taken for granted since birth. However, in the exercise of his natural rights, he was Jefferson’s equal; and with all of the powers of his office, Jefferson could do nothing to diminish those rights in the slightest degree.
The French peasant was told again and again by the leaders of the state that he was the equal of any man. There were no ranks and no titles. He was plain Citizen Peasant to all who knew him. And Robespierre was plain Citizen Robespierre to everyone from his closest associates down to the least significant man among Paris’ huddled masses. But what did this equality mean in practice? Citizen Peasant could be dragged from his home and family, thrown into a crowded cell, charged with a vague and specious crime “against the state,” and tried before a peremptory court of zealots. Conviction was almost certain. Execution in barbaric manner was equally certain.
No, men are not equal. Nor do all men mean the same thing when they declare their equality and claim their rights. For our own understanding of these words, let us hearken to that earlier document, which Jefferson doubtless had in mind. The Virginia Bill of Rights, published June 12, 1776, clearly and bluntly says: “… all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
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De-fuse the Bomb
Those who are concerned over a population explosion of too many people for the amount of food they will produce, are projecting the present results of our welfare state into the future and are ignoring the limitless potential of free enterprise.
PAUL L. FISHER
Redondo Beach, California
