The power to make that which is unequal equal

From Levine, “On Prudence and Progress”:

“For the Statist, liberty is not a blessing but the enemy. It is not possible to achieve Utopia if individuals are free to go their own way. The individual must be dehumanized and his nature delegitimized. Through persuasion, deception, and coercion, the individual must be subordinated to the state. He must abandon his own ambitions for the ambitions of the state. He must become reliant on and fearful of the state. His first duty must be to the state–not family, community, and faith, all of which have the potential of threatening the state. Once despirited, the individual can be molded by the state.

“The Statist’s Utopia can take many forms, and has throughout human history, including monarchism, feudalism, militarism, fascism, communism, national socialism, and economic socialism. They are all of the same species—tyranny. The primary principle around which the Statist organizes can be summed up in a single word—equality.

“Equality, as understood by the Founders, is the natural right of every individual to live freely under self-government, to acquire and retain the property he creates through his own labor, and to be treated impartially before a just law.  Moreover, equality should not be confused with perfection, for man is also imperfect, making his application of equality, even in the most just society, imperfect.  Otherwise, inequality is the natural state of man in the sense that each individual is born unique in all his human characteristics.  Therefore, equality and inequality, properly comprehended, are both engines of liberty.

“The Statist, however, misuses equality to pursue uniform economic and social outcomes.  He must continuously enhance his power at the expense of self-government and violate the individual’s property rights at the expense of individual liberty, for he believes that through persuasion, deception, and coercion he can tame man’s natural state and man’s perfection can, therefore, be achieved in Utopia.  The Statist must claim the power to make that which is unequal equal and that which is imperfect perfect.  This is the hope the Statist offers, if only the individual surrenders himself to the all-powerful state.  Only then can the impossible be made possible.” (251)

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