by Erkki S.

Created on: August 22, 2009

There's a socio-political work titled Liberty or Equality by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. This is a significant conservative handbook by a leading classical liberal writer who proclaimed monarchic loyalism and determined anti-authoritarianism. (If this all sounds controversial, it's because it is.)

The book verbosely claims you can't have both liberty and equality. Moreover, it claims equality should not be had at all, only liberty. The book cites the so-called Founding Fathers of the United States as the most authoritative supporters of the writer's set of beliefs, which is allegedly derivable from, inter alia, the text of the Declaration of Independence.

I think the Declaration is a wonderful piece of literature. However, I see the system of values represented there differently than the mentioned author. Let's analyse the first two sentences:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

LIBERTY

There you are: "unalienable Rights, ... Life, Liberty."

Liberty is actually the abstract space where actions and decisions take form and effect. E.g. You want to do something? You need liberty, otherwise it's impossible to act. You want liberty to destroy somebody? Reminder: the first right is life.

This seems quite a conflict. Is there a solution?

EQUALITY

In the quoted text, it says "equal" twice. The context is "separate and equal" which are both repeated concepts there in these sentences.

Let's consider liberty vis-a-vis equality.

1. You have one player who wants to take action. By all means, he has the liberty (there's no conflict with equality), but this is not what the document is discussing.
2. This is the situation the document is directly discussing: You have two players within one space (the same liberty). How are they to relate to each other so that both survive? The answer in the document: As separate and equal.

Should we not hold this truth to be self-evident, as the document says?

CONCLUSION

Classical liberals and modern conservatives would probably furiously object that I somehow misconstrue the meaning of the Founding Fathers here. It could very well be, because I am not looking at what they meant. I am looking directly at what they said.

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