IMPOSSIBLE EQUALITY  

PART 2

   The falsehood at the heart of perfectionism is that all human beings are born naturally good. Utopians by their own logic reject personal responsibility for bad behavior. Therefore they must blame something outside themselves - such as bad social and political institutions and beliefs. 

   Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762 was wrong to assert that every man is born free. We are born helpless, dependent on parents and others. Most of us become free and independent only as we mature. 

 ~ William Gairdner, The Epoch Times ~ 

   The traditional (and Judeo-Christian) view is that evil begins deep in the hearts and minds of men and women - of which governments are the reflection, not the origin. 

   Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who suffered greatly in a Soviet gulag, wrote that, "evil does not run between human groups. It runs through the middle of every human heart." 

   Those who cannot fathom evil in their own hearts want to eliminate every external evil by force of law. They need targets for elimination - institutions, and individuals who disagree with them. 

   Their notion, if they can make the world more equal - by any means - the natural goodness of all people will flourish and the state will become perfect. This secular "political religion" is their mission to create heaven on earth. A Soviet marshal admitted as much to Time after the USSR fell. 

   The more atheistic they are, the more spiritual or dreamlike their fervor. For if God is really dead, justice needs to be enforced by humans alone. 

   It isn't grace, or personal redemption, but tangible, forced equality provided by law of the progressive state. 

   Tomorrow: The end justifies the means