All Men are Created Equal – Not All Cultures

by Tom Rhodes, 8/28/2013

The values and culture of Western Civilization did not pop up from nowhere. It took centuries; more than 500 years after the Magna Carta we wrote our Declaration of Independence, the basis for the founding of our country. It took another century to end slavery in the USA and another century to end segregation, etc. The Declaration of Independence is highlighted by the idea expressed in these words, “All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” The implication isn’t to ignore the obvious fact that not all people are equally strong, or equally tall, or equally fast, or equally smart, rather it demands the equal application of the “Rule of Law”; meaning that the law should apply to every person equally with no special protections, punishments, nor privileges to anyone for any reason. The culture that developed under this auspice, “Western Civilization,” produced a set of values based on the concept of individual rights and the idea that government existed to protect these rights not to dictate how individuals should live.

The concept of individual rights, flies in the face of and defies the vast majority of human history. Even today it only applies to a minority of the world’s people. The reality is that through all of human history the plight of man is for the vast majority to live in privation, while a relative few live in relative luxury by controlling the masses through the use of force. Most cultures now and through history work on the premise of some ruling elite controlling the masses. Other cultures are jealous of the prosperity Western Culture brought but are unwilling to embrace the idea’s that made it possible, like liberty and freedom.

Contrary to what egghead academics try to promote and claim, all cultures are not equal. Western culture based on the idea of individual rights and application of the rule of law is demonstrably superior to all other cultures. Western values, not necessarily western people, as people from all over the world, Japanese, Chinese, African, Arab, etc. can and do share western values. The objective, observable, output that the application of reason and individual rights (a Western value) has produced unprecedented quality of life, including; longer life, better health and more wealth for the ordinary person than any culture in the history of man; a culture where a obesity is a more pressing problem for the poor than starvation.

Multiculturalists egghead academics want us to ignore all semblance of logic and reason and not only grant moral equivalency but celebrate all cultures as equal. They even label and attempt to shame those who don’t accept the lie of multiculturalism as bigots. Consider the following mores of other cultures; In around 30 African and Middle East cultures they practice forced female genital mutilation; In most of the middle east there are severe limits on women’s rights to drive, work, walk without male escort, vote and receive an education; Niger still practices slavery; Some pockets of South American still practice cannibalism; Sudan still practices slavery; some Islamic countries stone women for adultery; and in many Islamic countries professing to be a Christian results in a death sentence. How exactly are the mores of these cultures in any way equivalent to the fundamental values of Western Civilization?

The multicultural egghead academic elite on our university campuses across America today want to end individual rights and liberty. They seek to trade liberty and the risks it entails for government control and the security it promises (but fails to deliver). Rather than equality before the law, they want “entitlement.” The multicultural “diversity” agenda is to revert Western Civilization, to the norm for mankind, with a few ruling elite dictating how the masses should live. They believe the ruling elite know better where people should live, what they should eat, what they should learn, what they should drive, what risks they can take, etc. regardless of individual wants, desires, effort, and ability. Like the ruling elite throughout history they claim if only people would live as we dictate there would be utopia.

If it were just multicultural egghead academic elites on our universities, the attacks on Western Civilization might be ignored. But the regression from the rule of law to rule by elite dictates is manifest in our government. The height of the attack on Western Civilization is reflected in new laws which grant certain corporations exemption from prosecution, or exemption from competition, or exclusive rights that other companies and especially individuals don’t have. The idea that a corporation or any group has rights and privileges that don’t apply to every other individual is reprehensible. Image a law that identified John Doe, the mechanic, immune from any law suit for damages due to his faulty break repairs. H.R. 933, AKA the Monsanto Protection Act, is just such a law. The laws in the USA and their disparate enforcement looks more like feudalism of a millennium ago than modern Western Civilization. Oh the feudal lords of today don’t claim a Divine right through heredity or combat, but the day of the citizen representative to our government is dead. The choices offered to the people for elections are as carefully cultivated and controlled by the ruling elite today as the appointment of barons and dukes was in feudal times.

The values that were adopted and created modern Western Civilization can be summed up in one word: Libertarian. Any call for the elimination or restriction on individual rights and special laws that grant some people rights, protections, punishments, or privileges that don’t apply to others is an attack on Western Civilization and the idea that “All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”

All cultures are not equal and should not be celebrated. By embracing the two party system with its limited statist choices you are embracing neo-feudalism. If you embrace any culture that doesn’t support equality under the law for everybody, you are embracing tyrannical rule by some despotic elite rather than a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”