

". . . AND GULLIVER RETURNS"

\--In Search of Utopia—

BOOK 10

JUSTICE—LIBERTY or EQUALITY

by

Lemuel Gulliver XVI as told to Jacqueline Slow

Published by Total Health Publications

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 by Total Health Publications

ISBN 978-82-93232-22-3

Dear friends—Obviously I wrote this series to be read from Book 1 to the end, but silly me! Readers often begin with what sounds interesting to them. This may leave them unaware of the characters, my friends and I. So let me introduce them. We were boyhood friends, as wild and as close as geese heading south for the winter. But our university educations split us philosophically like a drop of quicksilver hitting the floor. But like those balls of mercury, when brought together, they again become one. As have we.

 Ray became a Catholic priest and moved far to the right of where our teenage liberalism had bound us. He calls himself a neo-conservative. We think he is a reactionary.

  Lee slid to the left of our adolescent leanings, and somewhere along the line became an atheist. He is a lawyer.

 Concannon, Con for short, retired from his very successful business. I guess his business experience moved him a bit to the right, to conservatism—a conservative just to the right of the middle.

  Then there's me. I think I'm pretty much a middle of the roader—except for my passion to save our planet by reducing our population before global warming, massive poverty and far-reaching famines decimate our humanity. Hope this introduction makes our discussions make a bit more sense.

 —"Well gentlemen, now you can get into your questions about justice and liberty and/or equality as being fundamental to justice. As you've just seen, here in The United Colonies we are pretty far to the right in terms of being libertarian. You've seen how our society functions. But I know that you have philosophical questions beyond my level of expertise. So let me introduce you to Dr. Kelsi Connor. She is chair of the political science department at our university. I'm sure she can answer your questions and leave you with more questions than you started with."

 –-Nice to meet you professor. It seems that in every country after we visit the country with a politician, we meet a professor who explains the principles behind the society. As you may know, we have visited countries where most people are very poor and we have visited countries where people tend to be quite rich. We have seen societies where there is a great deal of freedom and some were freedom is somewhat limited—particularly in terms of being able to have children if and when you want. I know that in your country you must be responsible for what you do. So a social welfare net is not a part of your democracy."

EQUALITY OR INEQUALITY AS A PILLAR OF JUSTICE

 —"You are certainly right. Democracy can go in different directions. It seems that in nearly all of the Western countries an idea of equality has become the fundamental pillar of your societies—your bases for ethics and justice. There are certainly some religious reasons that this might have occurred. I think here of Jesus saying that it is more difficult for rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. This may well be a reason for your socialistic welfare state ideas.

"Of course through most of your Christian history the Catholic Church has been based to a large degree on inequality. Women were inferior to men and the priests were superior to the laity. The Catholic Church is definitely a top down organization. But I guess as Nietzsche observed, the people at the top should just tell the people the bottom that they are equal while they continue to run their organization based on the fact of inequality. And I might add that those people on the bottom assume that they are the ones who are going to heaven. As we say 'they will get their pie in the sky bye and bye.'

"But it's not just the Catholic Church that is totally inequalitarian, every society seems to have been based on inequality. Kings got their 'divine right' to rule from God or from their parents. Some rulers became the leaders through their successes in war. Some did it by stealth, by poisoning or stabbing the existing ruler. It seems that the philosophers of the Enlightenment, like Rousseau and Locke, gave thinking people like your American revolutionaries, an idea that people should have some rights because they are people. They said that there was a 'natural law' but they didn't find it in nature. They found it in their thoughts and decided that it sounded profound.

"I laugh at the way 'democratic' societies are democratic only when it suits their purposes. I think of back in 2011 when the Palestinian representatives wanted to have UNESCO recognize them as a state and they had the backing of a huge majority of the countries of the United Nations, but your US didn't want to abide by the majority decision and vetoed the move in the Security Council. I see that you still have the Electoral College that allows minority presidents to be elected often. You have your government by lobbyists that work for business interests while shunning the needs of the majority of your citizens. And you call yourselves democratic!

"We are going to focus on the idea of justice in our discussion. All of these actions just mentioned may be 'just,' it merely depends on whether liberty or equality is the fundamental that you build your social justice system upon. It is not at all unanimous as to how one determines what is fair, or just. But what I have found in my discussions with people from other nations, especially the social welfare states, is that the recent idea of equality is so deeply ingrained in them that it has reached a level of being a basic assumption even though it generally runs counter to our observation of nature. It is so engrained that people will not discuss it--and any attempt to look more deeply meets with the same stonewalling that we usually find when discussing religion with someone whose only evidence for belief is found in the only book with which they are familiar, such as the Bible or Qu'ran. I find that the more widely read a person is in religion or politics the easier it is to discuss in depth the real issues. But as you know, most people are stuck at the level of opinion and neither facts nor logic can jar them into reality.

"Just look around at the major industrial countries of the world. In Europe and America the idea of equality has developed far beyond anything we have seen in the world to date. Pensions have been too generous and given to people who are too young to retire based on their contributions to their retirement systems. Look at Greece with its pensions starting in the early 50s for some, like hair dressers who are said to have hazardous jobs.. Every country has retirement ages that are too young. The contributions the workers have given to the retirement system are almost never adequate to pay the life-long pensions, unless the patriotic worker valiantly enjoys an early death. Of course older people want the perk of having a generous and early retirement--so they vote for it.

"Older people want socialized medicine for themselves even if they have not paid enough taxes to warrant it. So they vote for it. And their government borrows to pay for it.

"Workers want more vacation time so they vote for it. This of course cuts into the productivity of the country so the government borrows to pay for what these people want. After all, we are all equal and deserving of whatever we want.

"If you look at these countries across Europe and North America you find almost universal debt and nearly universal deficit spending. Because there is so much emphasis on equality and satisfying people's desires, there is huge employment in the domestic service realm but high unemployment in areas of manufacturing and exporting. Unemployment at home and foreign borrowing result. With the need for spending on equalitarian needs for the older people, education and other necessary expenses for the young must be reduced. Of course primary and secondary students are not allowed to vote so their needs fall far behind those of the elderly and middle-aged voters. People seldom see that the modern emphasis on equality as a fundamental of justice has put a heavy anchor on their economic potentials. Add to this the idea that everyone is worth at least a minimum wage because they are equal and we have still another brake on the economy.

But we don't see equality in any one country or between the countries. For example in Germany the average number of hours worked is 1419 and the average wage is $35 an hour. In the US the average worker works 1778 hours for a $30 wage. The Danes work 1502 hours and have a wage of $48.82. And the Mexicans work an average of 2250 hours. (1) When we look at the wages earned and compare them to the average taxes paid we find that the take-home wages generally range between $20 and $25 per hour worked. We can see that the average American works about 9 weeks longer than the average German. The Germans are on vacation much more than the Americans.

"But when we look at the various constitutions we don't see the equality for workers or older people mentioned. In fact equality is not an issue in the Western constitutions. For example the Norwegian constitution does not mention equality and the French constitution mentions it only in terms of equality before the law, an equality of sorts between the people in France and those in its territories, and of course the motto of the French Revolution ' Liberty, equality, fraternity'--a physically, psychologically, and philosophically impossible dream. Equality isn't mentioned in the American Constitution either!

"Contrast this with China where equality is mentioned three times primarily in relation to the various ethnic groups within the country. But it does indicate that equality is sometimes essential. In Article 6 it says that the whole people own the means of production. This implies an economic equality. But in the next sentence it says 'The system of socialist public ownership supersedes the system of exploitation of man by man; it applies the principle of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his work.' This would acknowledge an inequality of abilities or work ethics.

"The state is allowed to guide private industry. (2) This certainly indicates some economic liberty. And as we have seen, it has allowed for many Chinese to reach the billionaire status—not exactly economically equalitarian.

"In Article 19 it requires compulsory primary education. This might be an equalitarian or libertarian 'equality of opportunity' motivation. But once past primary schooling it is the liberty of superiority that takes over for secondary and higher education.

"Article 21deals with health and medical care. The government recently spent $124 billion on hospitals. This socialized medicine is obviously based on a belief in equality. The pension system which allows women to retire at 55 and men at 60 certainly needs to be adjusted with later retirement ages and higher pensions—but again illustrates an equalitarian approach to justice. But the age differences would indicate an inequality between men and women—possibly with women being weaker.

"Article 25 deals with family planning as a means to economic and social growth as the basis for its one child policy. Here we have a societal ethical basis that interferes with the liberty of self-centered values. So the values of individual liberty or equality may be cancelled by an important societal goal.

"You can see how these equalitarian ideas can conflict with our value of liberty as the overriding value for justice here in The Colonies."

 "I am chagrined at the concept of justice you have here in The United Colonies. You don't seem to see people as equally deserving of the goods of society. Your whole emphasis seems to be on how much money you can make and how you can keep taxes very low. I do applaud your ideas about equality of opportunity starting every young person approximately equal, but when people don't achieve at an adequate level you don't care if they die."

THE BASES OF JUSTICE

 —"Con, from what I understand in trying to comprehend the ideas of justice we have the same problems we had with understanding morality and values. You remember the long explanations that Dr. Wang gave us in Kino about the non-provable basic assumptions that we all encounter when we are discussing values. (3) As you remember, our values always come down to basic assumptions which either assume that we as individuals are most important, the self-centered bases; whether we believe that God is the most important assumption; or whether we believe in a certain type of society as being primary."

 —"True. Justice relates to values, particularly as they affect society. And just as morals and values are relative, so are the fundamentals of justice. What we think is 'just' depends on what we value. So what people see as 'just' varies immensely."

  —"Don't forget divine justice.

"Then we must understand that justice can be seen in many areas of our lives. We see it in the political sphere. We see it in the social sphere. We even see it in our financial dealings. For example, when countries have great debts, like Greece and the US, when finances must be cut, where will they be cut? Prison expenses, education expenses, social welfare programs, healthcare and other societal areas in which programs have been developed because it was thought that they were 'just' may now not be of the same essential nature. Is society therefore now unjust or is it that some things are more just than others? Is it more just to pay those who have lent your country money or is it more just to borrow more to pay social welfare benefits?

"I think of California trying to reduce its budget shortfalls ranging from $9 to $17 billion per year and they owe about $70 billion in bonds. The Democratic legislators want to make sure they are elected so they keep passing social welfare spending without taxing the population for it. They are either stupid, selfish or corrupt. Not one Republican voted for the last budget."

 —"Your American legislators seem to be attempting to give your people a bit of economic equality. But they don't tax like the social welfare countries do in Europe. You know, the word 'equality' does not show its face in your Constitution nor in the French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen'. Let's look at the French history of justice for a minute. The Declaration of 1789 defined Liberty in Article 4. It said that 'Liberty consists of being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.'

"Equality, on the other hand, was defined by the 1789 Declaration, in Article 6, as judicial equality stating that 'the law must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.'"

 —"That same kind of 'equality before the law' is in our Constitution. So I think you mean that there are different kinds of equality. An equal right to have your disputes settled by a court is not the same as an equal right to have the society support you economically, such as with unemployment compensation or food stamps."

 —"You are talking first about equal amounts of liberty then you talk about economic equality. You are trying to compare apples and oranges! But then what about 'freedom from want.' Isn't that in the Constitution?"

 —"No, that comes from the speech that President Franklin Roosevelt gave in 1941 just after Pearl Harbor. He mentioned the four freedoms and freedom from want was one of them. He said that 'translated into world terms, it means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.' So Roosevelt was on the side of economic equality in some sort of world terms."

 —"Right Lee, but two centuries ago there were few who advocated an equality of results. It was all about rights before the law and in personal beliefs, like religion, and such. As Rousseau said in his Social Contract, if we are to live in what he called 'the state of nature' and become social beings we need to have certain agreements. We need to be treated equally in terms of our voice under the laws that we choose. These equal rights had to do with people's starting points, not equal ending points.

"This identification of liberty and equality became problematic during the Jacobin period, when equality was redefined as equality of results, and not only the legal equality of rights. Sadly some believe that such an equality can only be achieved through coercion.

"So you can see when the major revolutions protested against monarchy and for democracy—it was liberty, especially equal rights to freedom, that was the major thrust of the new governments. We often confuse an equality of certain rights to freedom with the necessity of granting equality of treatment in other areas of living. One seeks to give equal liberties to the citizens the other looks to equalize people's treatment in the social and economic realms—even if the people have not used their liberty to achieve in those social and economic areas.

"Political scientists generally agree that liberty and equality are antithetical ideals. But we get confused when we use the term 'equal' when expressing basic liberties, such as equality of opportunity, and an equality before the law."

 —"We have come up against this problem with semantics several times in our travels, so I know what you mean." (4)

 —"Good. We humans are so often imprecise in our conversations that our meanings are often hidden, misunderstood or confused. As we proceed in our discussion, we will have to answer a number of questions. And as is often true when discussing nonscientific concepts, we will not achieve a unanimous agreement.

"When we think about what a just society should be we must go back to the basics. We need to look at science as well as ethics and we must base our ideas on either science or realistic ideals. Perhaps the major question is whether or not we are actually equal, and whether or not we should be treated equally. An additional question is when a person has caused his or her own problems, must society rescue that person?"

ARE WE EQUALLY HUMAN?

 .—"But we are all human!"

 —"What does that mean? Do we have some sort of special substance that makes us equal? For example, do we all have a soul? But a soul cannot be universally defined and has not been proven in any way. And beyond that, as a nonmaterial essence, I don't see any way that it could ever be proven. And I might say that those who have postulated the ideas of a soul in the theological discussions often find that the souls are unequal. They either become unequal when put into the body by God or they become unequal as the person lives his or her life. But let me come back to that later."

 .--"Well, I'm an atheist so I don't believe in that soul garbage. But we all have the same number of chromosomes."

 -"Most of us have 46 chromosomes but some of us have 47 or even 48 and some have 45. But if we look at the 46 chromosome level, hares also have 46 chromosomes. So are we equal to hares?"

 .--"We all have human parents, maybe that is the key."

 -"Do you think that humanness should be related to something other than common human parents or chromosomes or genes? Do you think that Leonardo da Vinci, Aristotle or Thomas Jefferson were equal to Hitler, Genghis Khan and Stalin in being human or fulfilling human qualities?

"Just what criteria would you suggest for humanness?--Height and weight, chromosomes and genes, a certain level of intelligence? Or would you use other criteria such as: social or political contributions to society, technological contributions such as Edison and Gates have given us? Or might it be the truly human accomplishments such as Nietzsche, Carlisle or Maslow have suggested?

"Non-rational people like to say that we are all human, but they don't define what they mean by human? It's like so many other words that have a myriad of meanings like: democracy, socialism, liberty, equality, vales, morality and other such terms that are easily mentioned but impossible to find a common and agreed upon definition.

"Our physical bodies are certainly not equal but is there something beyond the body that makes us equal, such as a soul? The second question follows, that if we are not equal, should we somehow be treated equally? The third question, relative to justice, is whether or not law-abiding health-conscious citizens have a responsibility to take care of those who are either not law-abiding or not health-conscious. So what responsibility does the average citizen have to pay for the expenses of criminals in the justice system and in the prison system? And what responsibility does the health conscious citizen have to take care of the drug addict, the smoker with emphysema or the drunk driver who is now in the hospital because of an accident he caused? If we are a compassionate society do we look differently on a person with AIDS who contracted it through a blood transfusion or a heart transplant than one who contracted it through promiscuous and unprotected sex activity or dirty needles?

"The answers to these questions should be based on well thought-out factors and not just merely on a snap opinion. People seldom think through the issues. They have opinions about abortion, the death penalty, gay marriage and things like that but when it comes to looking at the realities of governing and being governed, there is too much left to be desired. Generally people want low taxes but they want big federal pensions and free medical care. They want liberty in their personal lives but if they don't make it financially, they want economic equality when they are out of work, when they are sick, and when they are old."

 —"I don't understand how some of my fellow conservatives can advocate smaller government and lower taxes while also opposing the abortion of unwanted children who will have to be educated at taxpayers' expense and will often find their way into the judicial system and prisons--also at taxpayers' expense. In the 2006 book Freakonomics (5), the economist author suggested that the reason that crime decreased in the 1990s was that the Roe v. Wade decision 20 years earlier allowed poor mothers to have abortions, So potential criminals were not born. Then it appears that the major impetus for outlawing abortion is traced to Pope Pius IX's decision in 1869 that since Mary was conceived without original sin, the soul must be infused into the ovum with the sperm. (6). Perhaps they should stop cutting funding for schools and require degrees in economics and logic!"

 —"The answer to these questions lies in a much deeper analysis of the facts of science and political ideals based on meta-ethical principles."

 —"It seems that every professor we have talked to has emphasized that same point. Our most basic values rest on unprovable or unexamined ideas, yet many are ready to die for their unprovable beliefs. In fact it seems to me that the less likely a belief is—the more people are ready to kill for it. I guess it is because they really know very little about the world of ideas so their limited indoctrinations are seen as a true world view.

"Well Kelsi, let's get on with thinking deeper into the idea of justice. It is a pity that all the world's people can't be a part of this discussion. If they were I would guess we would have fewer car bombs, fewer genocides and fewer wars,"

 —"I'm sure of it. Across the world we see that the better educated populations are generally less war-like. Commander, I mean Wreck, what thoughts do you have on the subject of justice?"

WHAT SHOULD BE THE BASIC CONCEPT FOR JUSTICE IN A SOCIETY?

 —"On my voyage I gave a great deal of thought to the idea of justice. I had heard people of every ilk screaming for it. The 'have not' countries had demanded it from the 'haves.' But what are the possible roots for justice in a society?

"Justice, of course, means fairness. But what is fair? Is it fair to increase the taxes of the working people to pay those who are not working? Is it fair to give money to a disabled person who can't work but not give it to an able bodied person? Is it fair to give a university scholarship to an athlete or a musician as well as to a physicist? Is it fair that some schools have better teachers and more equipment than other schools? Is it fair that a person can be jailed for using marijuana or driving drunk?

"Throughout those lonely years in space my mind wrestled with the ideas of the philosophers. I would accept one definition of justice and immediately see an exception to my rule. Is justice determined by might or right? Does power dictate correctness? In the real world this is often so. But should it be thus? Should there be a moral correctness which would be fundamental to individual and societal values systems?

"The philosopher Spinoza held that 'everything has by nature as much right as it has power to exist and operate.' When I look at your country, Kelsi, The Colonies, I see that the weaker people seemed to have little power. Why is that? It is so different from the dicta of Jesus saying that 'the meek shall inherit the earth' and that it is 'more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.' You certainly don't seem to have a God based value system."

 —"We haven't visited Muchinju yet but I know they use a system based to a large degree on religious principles."

 —"I don't know very much are about Muchinju, perhaps there the guilt of being a 'have' can be soothed by voting higher taxes upon oneself and giving to the unfortunate. Our assumption here is largely self-centered, but we realize that we must live in a society and that society needs taxes to exist. As you know, our society keeps our taxes very low while we live then takes nearly all of our accumulated savings after we die. This requires that each generation begin anew and that equality of opportunity is essential. We see how you other Western societies allow children to inherit money they did not earn. We think this is very unhealthy, and unjust. We think also that when a person or society does not work and progress and be hungry to achieve, it slides backwards. You don't find a lot of drug addicted people working to achieve. The addicts are concerned either with forgetting reality and their failures, or with achieving a chemical high rather than gaining their joys from accomplishment.

"Philosophers of history have observed that societies often begin with people working hard to achieve freedom and comfort. After a number of generations many have accumulated riches. They have lost their initiative to achieve and desire only pleasure. They hire mercenaries to fight their wars. They seek pleasure in sex and drugs and they want to be entertained. Merely existing in a fog of fantasy replaces the pioneering spirit that brought them riches. Their values changed from being society based and self-centered for future prosperity to being a 'me' generation wanting only 'pleasure now.'

"The West is approaching that level now. Look at how many youth are addicted to drugs, rock concerts, video games and sex. They want to be entertained, not produce. Compare that with the obsession for education in China and South Korea. The youth of the East are working towards goals. The youth of the West are commonly obsessed with relaxation.

 .—"As you know, Kelsi, when we visited Kino and talked to Prof. Wang she spent a great deal of time looking at the meta-ethics of our values. When we look at the basic assumptions which we may hold in our belief systems-- a God based value system, a self centered value system, or a society based value system. It is obvious that a God based system would work if there was a God and if everyone believed in the same God and this God is really concerned with the world.

"The problem is of course that no one can prove that a god exists, or if one exists, that it is really concerned with the world. The horrors of history clearly show that either there is no merciful god or if a god exists it is not concerned with the world. If there were a god why would it reveal itself in so many different ways? --as multiple gods in India and the Far East, as a ferocious God in the Old Testament and in much of the Koran, as a nice fella in much of the New Testament, and in so many other ways—like Olympus or Valhalla?

"The truth seems to be that today, as throughout history, might makes it right. While the Western religious ideas assume that God knows everything and is totally just, I think there are enough of us who see injustices in innocent people being killed in wars, terrorist plots, tsunamis, earthquakes and so many other natural disasters. Self-centered justice, on the other hand, may easily be reduced to 'what do I want.'

"The major questions related to justice revolve around how the concept is treated in a society. When one assumes that a society must be created and developed, what concept of justice must be held? Every society, therefore, assumes an unprovable basic assumption that it should exist. Most people react against both and realize that a social compact must be developed by a group of individuals for harmonious living to occur and for the individual talents to be given free rein.

"So justice in a society can be based, all or in part, on the three ethical bases—self, God or society. These then can be ameliorated by the values of liberty or equality.

"The oldest set of laws that I know about was that of the Babylonian King, Hammurabi. In his code of laws there was equality for equals. Of course slaves and free men were not equal neither were adults and children. For example, if a builder builds a house for another man and the house collapses he must build him another house. If a builder builds a house and it collapses and kills the owner, the builder will be put to death. (7). if the house collapses and kills the son of the owner, the builder's son will be killed. (8) If the house collapses and kills a slave he must give the owner a slaves of equal value. (9). And in paragraph 196 it requires that if a man destroy the eye of another man they shall destroy his eye.

 —"Well that 'eye for an eye' idea of justice is found in the Bible. (10)

 —"But Hammurabi's laws preceded Moses Bible by six or seven hundred years. In fact they were written before Abraham was supposed to have lived. So an equality of rights and duties goes back a long time.

"But there are other necessities to a just society than equal rights. Attendant values such as honesty and loyalty to one's country are essential. Honesty is often challenged by corruption such as bribery. And national loyalty is challenged by treason, and often by dissent. Some societies, like the U.S., allow for a great deal of dissent. China allows less and Russia can fine you a year's salary for participation in a demonstration." (11)

 —"And when you look at our national political races you can see that it is quite divisive. The outright lying, the charges made without evidence and the attempts to 'charge the faithful" to vote with their ears rather than their minds --all downplay whatever intelligence we might have."

 —"Contrast our American approach of allowing any political criticism, no matter how false or flimsily illogical, with the Chinese constitutionally sanctioned prohibition against some dissent. In Article 28 it states that 'The state maintains public order and suppresses treasonable and other counter-revolutionary activities; it penalizes actions that endanger public security and disrupt the socialist economy and other criminal activities, and punishes and reforms criminals.' This should keep the political waters relatively smooth."

 —"But other planks in their constitution do give freedom to dissent. In Article 35 the people are given the rights to freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration. In Article 41 citizens are given the right to criticize and make suggestions about the state to the state. This right does not extend to criticizing the state to others, such as to news media."

 —"It is obvious that justice has different definitions and elements in each society. In one the king or dictator determines what is just. In another a constitution may give certain rights to liberty or equality. But even the constitution's elements may be emphasized to different degrees. In you country the Supreme Court has certainly changed the original meanings in your Constitution."

 \--"Right, we talked about that much earlier where the Supreme Court eliminated the civil right to have ex post facto protection in civil cases in the US. (12) This was quite opposite of what framers of the Constitution intended. Our Supreme Court, depending on their own biases, twists Constitutional meanings whenever they desire. In China the government makes it a priority to not rock the ship of state with unscheduled protests. And Russia fines unscheduled protesters $9,000 to $30.000. Individual liberties therefore may be drowned under the tidal wave of a unilateral need of the state rather than the individual desires of its citizens. So what are we call justice varies from person to person and state to state. What I would like to do here is look at some elements that should be considered in a theory of justice. Self centered desires, the pronouncements of the several gods of the world, the needs of a particular society, balancing of liberty needs versus equality desires—all may need to be considered."

 -"It looks like we may come out with some academic knowledge and an ability to analyze our society. But we won't be able to develop a universal theory of justice."

 -"Right. But maybe by laying out the different possibilities people may be able to determine better ways to progress toward justice. Do we take a top-down government such as in Saudi Arabia or China where the king or the oligarchical leadership wants to smooth the way to progress. Or do we take a bottom-up approach as is supposed to be the way of democracy?

"We continually see the efforts of religions to force their theological beliefs into secular societies. Anti-abortion, anti-contraception, and anti-homosexual beliefs have grabbed the headlines for years. Efforts to have the taxpayers of the state support the efforts of religion are still common, whether it is the state paid salaries for clerics in Norway or the tax free church property and the tax deductions for donations to churches in the U.S. And of course Sharia law in Muslim countries supplants other ideas of justice."

WHAT IS JUSTICE?

 -"Is the criterion for justice that which allows the greatest individual achievements, such as in the great man theory or in the ideas of Nietzsche's overman? Is justice merely giving us each what we want? Is it giving each of us what we deserve? And if so, how do we determine what qualifications indicate that we are deserving? What criteria should we use. Is it because we have more education, we work harder, we give more money to charity, we earn more money, we are more ethical, we belong to a certain religion? And how should we determine what we deserve? Is it only because we exist? Are we owed because our ancestors once owned the area, like the Native Americans? Are today's Blacks owed because 7 generations ago blacks were enslaved? Are Mexicans owed because Mexico once owned the Southwest United States and it was taken from them? Should the Holocaust of Jews by Germans entitle them to a land in the Mideast populated primarily by Muslims?"

 —"In addition to issues such as these, justice is often limited or enhanced by money. The confessed Norwegian mass murderer of 77 young people had a ten week trial that cost $17 million. Can you imagine the cost and speed of the trial if the murders had happened in Nigeria, Russia or China?

 \--"Is it 'just' for Norway to spend 17 million dollars in a court hearing for a confessed murderer of more than 70 young people when the money might have gone to improve healthcare delivery or education in that country? That money could have paid for 3400 five-teacher schools in sub-Saharan Africa or it could have bought food for some of the 1.5 million starving children in Africa. Is the right to a fair trial of a confessed mass murderer in his own country superior to the right to life or education for children in other countries?

\--"Is defending the political liberty of a fair trial for a Norwegian citizen more important than saving the lives of thousands of starving children in Africa or providing university educations for thousands of women in Afghanistan?

\--"Is it 'just' to spend more money on food for your dog when people are staving in other parts of the world? Does your pet have more value than a law abiding person in another country?

\--"Is it 'just' that people born in a rich country have far more opportunities for happiness or success than people being born in a poor country to poor parents?

\--"Is it 'just' when politicians pass spending bills without taxing to pay for them, passing on the debt to our children and grandchildren? This certainly has caused problems in the US and southern Europe.

\--"Is it 'just' when businessmen outsource jobs to other countries when the people in their native country need them?"

 .--"Let me throw out a few options. Is it 'just' to outlaw psychoactive drugs when many people want to use them and the enforcement of the laws greatly increases police and prison expenses?

\--"Is it 'just' when wealthy businesses or individuals hire lobbyists who bribe legislators to pass laws that are contrary to the interests of the general population?

\--"Is it 'just' to charge sales taxes or value-added taxes for food and services when those who buy the most, such as people with large families, cost the government much more in education expenses and other municipal expenses?

\--"Is it 'just' for the Pope to order Catholic nuns to spend more time on preventing abortion and contraception and less time on social justice issues?" (13)

 \--"I've got some more! Is it 'just' when a group, such as the Catholic bishops, work to prevent abortion and contraception when even those who disagree with them will be required to pay the taxes to educate the unwanted children and to provide other social costs, including law enforcement and prison expenses. To what degree should an advocate for a position require that he or she will be financially responsible for the results of the position they advocate?

\--"Is it 'just' that people get tax breaks because they contribute money because they have 'faith' in an unproved religious idea when other people who run their lives on facts must pay more taxes?

\--"Is it 'just' that any person who claims 'faith' in a religious idea can begin a church that is tax-free, while other people who have different beliefs have to pay higher taxes because of it?

\--"Is it just in a society that separates church and state to allow the state to subsidize the churches?

\--"Is it 'just' to allow anyone at any age to have children when they cannot provide the financial or emotional support required for raising a child who is loved?

\--"What is more 'just'-- considering the needs of a child or the desires of its prospective parents when considering parenthood?

 —"You point out the fact that there is often a chasm between acting on an ideal of justice in an individual case and seeking justice for the greater good. A similar problem arises when we look at what is just in a local situation and what is just for the local, national or international community.

"The questions about justice all are related to the values we talked about with Dr. Wang in Kino. (14) and Lee, as you were posing your questions every one came down to a value decision, usually self-centered versus society based or God-based values. But sometimes it was God versus society and sometimes it was the conflict between equality and liberty."

"As we have seen recently, non-provable, or at least difficult to prove ideas relate to whether we are equal, and should be treated equally, or are we unequal and liberty should be the criterion for a just society, or even that we are unequal but should be treated equally.

"Boy, I hate to repeat myself but it is clear that our most basic beliefs are so often not effectively defined or are non-provable. Whether it is democracy, capitalism, socialism, equality, liberty, a belief in God or of some ideal society. And beyond that, it seems that these non-provable ideas are held in such high esteem by zealots that they allow for terrorism, war, torture, and they inhibit one's individual freedom in so many areas such as in abortion, euthanasia and personal morality.

"In our country it is more important to win a football game than to clarify our thinking, make us logical, advance our society or to create jobs. I assume that you heard about the University of Florida recently in eliminating its computer science department while adding $2 million to its athletic budget. (15)

 —"Any real American knows that it is more important to beat Miami University in football in November than to place a number of computer engineers in jobs for life. America is about winning games between colleges, not about being competitive in today's global economy!!"

 —"Right . There is not a university in China that can field a football or basketball team to play against any of our top 100 universities. All they do in their higher education is to turn out engineers, mathematicians, physicists and chemists."

"Let's back up a little bit. I think we have jumped too far ahead in our discussion. Let's define justice. Justice of course means fairness. The question is 'what is fair?' Should it follow nature's inequality where lions eat zebras and humans eat chickens? Certainly we find inequality between and within species. The major questions are:

\--are humans actually equal to each other;

\--if they are equal should they be treated equally,

\--if they are not equal should they be treated equally,

\--should those who have not succeeded educationally or economically be brought up to the level of those who have;

\--should a system of justice, total societal justice not just legal equality, be based on actuality, that is, whether or not we are actually equal?

"One problem with developing a theory of justice is that each of us has our own interests and agendas, and of course each of us believes we are most important. But since everyone has their own interests, and quite commonly they conflict with the interests and agendas of others, we really can't come up with a theory of justice that satisfies everyone's needs. What we can do is look at some of the bases that have been used for systems that some people thought were 'just' for a society.

"There are a number of elements for justice in a society. Generally we believe that people should be honest. We believe that they can be loyal to their own citizens, being a traitor is universally despised. We should have the courage to defend our society. But the major elements generally come down to whether it is just to treat people equally or unequally. If people are equal they should certainly be treated equally. But if they are not equal, is unequal treatment just? If people are inferior, should slavery be considered 'just?' If people are not smart, is it 'just' to take advantage of them financially? Or if they are not smart is it 'just' to manipulate them with propaganda? We certainly see this on both sides of most American political campaigns.

"We continually see people who are unequal in wealth, in cunning, in power or in prestige taking advantage of others with less money or less intelligence or knowledge.

"If we each have freedom, then is bribery just? If we are unequal, then the survival of the fittest can be the rule. But if we are equal, then it is unjust."

 —"It seems to me that there is much more than equality or inequality, or equality versus liberty that the concept of justice might include. For example:

\--"Is it just to have unwanted babies born?

\--"Is it just to have today's people making the planet uninhabitable for future generations?

\--"Was it just to have 100 million people killed in wars and uprisings since the end of World War II? A few, like the suicide bombers, wanted to die, but the huge majority wanted to live.

\--"Is it just that fewer than 900 people who perpetrated these millions of killings have been brought to trial?

\--"Is it just when politicians lie about their opponents in an election?

\--"Is it just when the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer?

"Every day we encounter situations that are probably unjust."

  "My neighbor is a teacher. She is constantly being accosted and threatened by parents of students to whom she had given low marks. One of the coaches at her school was sued because she played a freshman soccer player who was outstanding and displaced the senior daughter of the complaining parents. The parents believed that it cost their daughter a chance at a college scholarship."

 —"Last year parents filed 201 non-injury lawsuits against coaches, leagues and school districts for everything from their children not getting the most valuable player trophy, to not playing as much as the parents thought they should. (16)

"Let's face it, what we see as injustice we observe many times every day."

 —"And most of these come back to an action that was based on either liberty versus equality, or equality versus inequality. For example, in the case you just mentioned with the coach—the coach had the liberty, and the duty, to play the best player. But the older girl's parents saw their daughter at least equal to the freshman player. In fact they saw her as superior because she had played more years for the team.

"Commander, I know you're concerned about licensing parents to have babies. This is a question of liberty. Can a government reduce the liberty of potential parents in order to increase the liberty of the potential children to have a better equality of opportunity and to have a better life and to increase the society's liberty by reducing taxes to pay for the expenses of unwanted children, each of which will cost $120,000 to $250,000 to educate through the secondary or higher education level and well over a quarter million dollars in all other expenses and often topping several million dollars if they are imprisoned and utilize taxpayer money for their legal defenses. So here we have the liberty of potential parents pitted against the liberty of others in the society and the potential opportunities of the children born to them.

"UNICEF recently released the statistics for the number of children living in poverty in OECD countries. The US with 23% of its children impoverished was the second worst, ahead of only Romania with 25.6% of its children being poor. Compare that with Finland at 5% and Norway at 6%. (17) What are the opportunities for a real freedom to succeed for these children?

"But there is another aspect of liberty that is challenged when evangelical legislators vote to prohibit abortions. Here you have the personal liberty of the parent pitted against a supposed God-based value for the society based on a definition of when life starts or when potential life should be protected. So you have the actual liberty of the person being thwarted by an unprovable definition. This of course is a much greater affront to liberty and would be unjust to any rational mind. Then you have the liberty of the taxpayers having to cough up more money to educate unwanted children."

 —"If fertilized ova are actually human lives they should therefore have the right to vote, as 3 and 5-year-olds should? Is a sperm or an ovum a person or does it only happen when the sperm penetrates the ovum? If the evangelical politicians who want personhood to be legalized at the instant of conception, is any person who stops that fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus going to be a criminal. But most fertilized over don't implant, so is God responsible for these spontaneous abortions? And if so, must God be put on trial? It would seem that if we are going to live in a just world that God should be at least as just as we expect humans to be."

 —"A point well taken, Lee. But let's go back to the Commander's concerns.

"Your second question about justice is a good one. It would seem that the evidence is pointing to the fact that global warming will make much of the planet uninhabitable and that it will significantly affect future generations. Of course we don't know exactly what science might be able to do to reduce the fact of the greenhouse gases, to increase an inexpensive supply of pure water, to somehow develop substitutes for the natural resources that we are exhausting, and to find a way to dispose of the garbage and sewage that 7 billion people are spewing out.

"I don't think you would get many arguments about the injustice of the many millions of people who have been killed recently in wars and terrorist activities.. But relative to bringing the culprits to justice, is it actually possible to bring every general and every soldier who perpetrated these murders to justice. There is a time when some things just have to be let go for the societal peace of mind even though the individual prosecutions might result in death penalties or life sentences for hundreds of thousands of perpetrators.

"Then you ask about politicians lying. This of course is an unwanted but prevalent byproduct of democracy. Think of the lies that led to the death of Socrates. And worse, think of the knives that led to Caesar's death. As Lord Acton has warned, 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' Actions that we see as unjust are common political techniques that are used to motivate us."

 .—"Wreck you know what Chuck Chan said about our nearly universal drive for power, (18) it is a deep seated goal to enlarge one's individual power. Merely being dishonest in elections is not nearly as high on our ethical scales as power is on our psychological scale.

"Then the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the poor or the unintelligent."

 —"There again you have the liberty to lie in order to achieve your goal. Your last concern dealt with the rich getting richer. That of course is another obvious frustration about people being unequal and when they have the liberty to amass wealth the wealth must come from somewhere.

SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR YOUR SOCIETY

 —"On another front--looking at the way the Pope chastised American nuns a few years ago for not spending their time on the 'right to life' and against abortions while they were spending their time on poverty and social justice. As I understand it, the New Testament speaks of helping the poor and 'doing unto others.' I don't remember Jesus mentioning abortion or gay marriage. As I remember he said 'Blessed are the merciful.' What about that?"

 \--" You know that our religion is run from the top down. God gives His concerns to the Pope and he acts on it."

 —"Maybe you can clarify for me why God keeps changing His mind about what is important, and therefore what is just. 3000 years ago it seems that marrying a number of wives and having concubines was perfectly legitimate, if not ideal. But when the Mormons tried it the other Christians made them stop. When Galileo wanted science to become important, God reacted, through the Pope, and tried to put a stop to it. Then some years later He changed his mind and allowed science. But then a couple of hundred years ago, without any empirical evidence, the Pope decided that the soul entered the fertilized ovum. This, of course, had no evidence in reality--only a whim of Pope Pius IX. This then resulted in the idea of no abortions and has resulted in the deaths of doctors in abortion clinics and in the births of many unwanted children.

"With a God who keeps changing His mind, or with some problems with the communications from heaven to the Vatican, how can we know what God wants and what is therefore 'just.'?

 —" God works in mysterious ways and we humans are not privy to His desires or his logic. It is our faith that is supreme and we believe in God's will. You people who assume that you can use your incomplete knowledge and logic of the world to analyze the thinking of the all-perfect and all-knowing Creator delude yourselves with your infinitesimal knowledge and assume that you can debate with the Creator's perfect knowledge and power. I cannot get over the vanity that you show."

 —"It was not my intention to get into a theological discussion in our discussion of justice, but when so many religious pronouncements, based only on faith, become issues of justice, it becomes essential to question basic assumptions and the evidence used in arriving at these varying demands. It is not only true of religious demands for justice but also for most secular ideas also. Are we equal? Is communism the best form of government? What do we mean by democracy? Is the demand for lower taxes by billionaires equal to the demands for better and less expensive medical care by an equal number of poor people?"

 \--"The major questions related to a concept of justice, I think, deal with how it is viewed and implemented in a group of people--in a society. Society must then rest on a second level of basic assumptions. How can its citizens be treated fairly? This is not a simple question to answer. In fact it may be impossible to answer because, while a consensus may be developed, dissidents will always arise. That is, they will arise if the society gives them the opportunity to think and to freely speak. The US gives huge amounts of freedom to speak to its dissidents. China gives little opportunity in this area. As a result the US has huge divisions among its people and even violent, and often deadly, altercations. China's society seems to run much smoother on the surface. Dissidents are often jailed or otherwise silenced. You remember that in 2012 the Chinese government took many popular television programs off of the air because they were too Western, too sexy, and did not express the typical Chinese values such as found in Confucius. They could certainly increase divisiveness.

"While dissidents certainly have the right, if not the duty, to find a society with rules by which they can live, they often seek to change their current social order from within. In our country the homosexuals did it in the 80s and 90s. Women did it in the 60s and 70s. African-Americans did it in the 60s. Generally these groups succeeded to some degree. Affirmative action laws in the 60s and 70s helped women, blacks and other minorities to get a stronger foothold in our economic system. They required adjustments by the white males. But it did what it set out to do.

"But often, as Karl Marx advocated, they seek to change the whole social order. Should these minority voices be heard? If heard, should they be heeded? May they have rights of a higher order than those that are fundamental to their existing society? If so, from whence do these rights spring?

"Are there "unalienable" rights-- as the author of my country's Declaration of Independence declared? Are there rights granted by nature which supersede the rights that a society can bestow? If so, what are those rights? What basic assumptions must one believe in order to hold that nature somehow bestows such rights?

"Can a concept of justice applied to a society answer all of the questions of fairness? It may limit those ephemeral natural rights as it may limit the rights of the mighty. Does justice, when applied to a society, require an element of love or mercy as a fundamental? Shakespeare's Portia, in the Merchant of Venice, declared that "Earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice." Is brotherly love an essential element of societal justice? If so, by what authority?"

 -"My own analysis, which seems to hold true for most of the questions of justice that modern society faces, is that we must determine how important the good of society must be compared with the selfish individual voices that demand things that will hurt the overall society. Then we must determine whether any unproven faith in religion or some unproven social theory should be given any credence in the formation of the society. This might even reduce the rights to freedom of speech—if we require that political speech must be provable, or at least probable.

"Then we need to determine whether we are going to hold equality or liberty as primary when we determine what is 'just' in a society. While the various declarations of independence call for equality—at least for an equality of certain rights, if the revolution is successful, the constitutions call for liberty. And while the declarations are not law, they only call for independence, they hold great weight because they ignited the spark of freedom that generated the rebellion to be free. Look at the revolutions of the Arab Spring some years ago when dissidents in Egypt, Libya and other countries overthrew their powerful long-reigning despots. They wanted jobs, more freedom and the opportunity to live happier lives.

"It was freedom, liberty, that the people wanted. But in order to get out from under the thumb of the tyrant they had to plead that they were not given equal opportunity to enjoy freedom. They were treated as unequals.

"But getting rid of a tyrant does not magically bestow PhDs in math and chemistry to all the revolutionaries. And as I remember, a year after each revolution the unemployment rates had risen and the countries were a bit worse off. So much for the equality of opportunity that the revolutionaries craved.

 —"In my own country Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that "all men are created equal." This equality, he found, came from their Creator--and this, he said, is self evident, that is --a basic assumption. He went on to assert that all people have the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." So in my country our basic rights spring from God—a God that Jefferson did not believe in! Yet in our constitution we separated church from state.

"Our constitution and laws, based on assumptions which hold our society's values, do not necessarily support the rights that Jefferson said have been given us by God. Our right to life is taken by the possibility of capital punishment or by an often required service in the armed forces. Our rights to liberty are often reduced by others' rights to an equal status which our Creator has given us all. And our right to pursue happiness is often frustrated when we don't achieve as much as we think we deserve."

 —"Yes these conflicts in status and desire confuse us and elicit in us the demands for justice. But each of us defines justice in different ways. Can we reduce this confusion? Can we develop a consensus to resolve our dilemma? The answer to the first is yes, to the second is no! No matter how well the philosophers and the lawmakers refine the thinking on an issue, most individuals judge its effect on how it impacts them. It is a universal truth that whenever a social value conflicts with a self centered value there cannot be consensus. The 'selfs' who are served by the social compact applaud. The 'selfs' whose convenience is hindered yell 'boo.'"

 —"In my country, as opposed to your country 'The Colonies,' many of the people and many of the legislators and judges have assumed that the idea of equality means more than equality before the law or equality of opportunity for education and for a chance at pursuing happiness. Many have taken it to mean the right to economic equality. While nearly all citizens have cheered the right to educational equality and the right to vote, many have objected: to the income tax which attempts to level the economic gains; to support the children born to unwed mothers or to women who cannot afford to raise their children themselves; and to the rights of felons to live better than the law abiding homeless."

THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM

  "Speaking of your politicians, how do you see the assumptions and theories of your liberal and conservative politicians and voters. There seem to be so many elements in their beliefs that I don't see how they hang together. Will you bring me up to date on your conservative and liberal thinking in the U.S.?"

WHAT IS A CONSERVATIVE

 — "Let me start with what is a conservative. Defining the meaning of such a broad concept is impossible. In political science courses we learned that on the far right are the reactionaries who want to go back to where we were. To their left are the conservatives who want to conserve values and move more slowly. In the middle we have the moderates, then to their left we have the liberals who want to change things and to their left, the radical liberals who are willing to change things violently. Our founding fathers might be considered to be among them. The Tea Partiers in America are considered to be conservatives but are actually reactionaries—wanting to return to the days of no income tax, low taxes, no health insurance and the days of 'revival' religion.

"But there is another continuum, that of advocating equality on the left and advocating liberty on the right. Both sides would accept the principle of "equality of opportunity" but for those who do not turn out well, those on the left will tend to want to equalize them, financially if necessary. Those on the right, espousing liberty, believe it is enough to let everyone have a chance at success. Most Americans find themselves on the right in some areas and on the left in others. Our Social Security system is socialistic ('from each according to his ability to each according to his work') and our Medicare system is communistic ('from each according to his ability to each according to his needs')--but few people want to eliminate them. Most of us are eclectic volleyballs bouncing right and left according to our whims and wishes.

"A big part of the conservative political leaning is toward economic liberty. This can lend itself to selfishness. Nietzsche thought we should move up the financial and political mountains as fast as we could. Ayn Rand, the modern philosopher of the extreme right, agreed and advocated selfishness in pursuit of our goals. Unbridled liberty is seen as essential.

"But American conservatives, in contrast to most Western conservatives, throw religion in the mix because Americans like to say they are religious. And religions tend to conserve values long after they have served their purpose for a society. Many Jews, most Muslims and some Christians follow the ancient Middle East traditions on avoiding pork. These traditions may have developed in ancient Syria and may have their origins in either mythology or in the dietary dangers of trichinosis. But whatever the obscure beginnings, modern cooking methods and nutritional knowledge shows us that properly cooked pork is more nutritious than properly cooked beef. The Middle Eastern tradition of polygamy has been dropped by many, but still has its conservative advocates. Capital punishment, too, has its sanctification in the Western scriptures but has dwindling support among the peoples of the West. The acceptance of homosexuality, generally condemned in the holy writings, is also losing its hold on many in the West. These older ideas appeal to many whose ideas trace back to Moses through the Old Testament whether they are found in the Bible or the Koran.

"But other conservative religious ideas are primarily post-Biblical. Contraception and abortion are ideas that have scant prohibitions in the ancient scriptures but rate at the top of the conservative agendas for many who call themselves religious. But even though rubber condoms and birth control pills were not even thought of in the days of Mohammad or Paul, effective contraception is too new to be 'good.' And unwanted children were rarities in agricultural societies where every hand was needed, so it somehow follows that all children today in advanced technological economies must also be desired.

"Another conservative idea is that all or most international disagreements can be settled by war. This is one of society's oldest beliefs. Because of this you need large armed forces and huge defense spending."

 —"That brings us back to Dr. Singh's list of political techniques where violence and war are the most primitive techniques. (19) But wars and violence often cost more in lives and resources than they gain in conquest. Just look at the ultimate results of World War II for Hitler or Pol Pot's massacres in Cambodia."

 —"But on the other hand look at the eventual positive results for China from Mao's revolution. The same, of course, can be said for our American and French revolutions. But we will have to wait to evaluate the effectiveness of the Arab Spring revolutions.

"In today's world with the emphasis on democracy, ideally the ballot box usually replaces bullets and bombs. The warfare is verbal. Look at our American presidential elections of late. Presenting workable solutions to society's problems is only a minor concern after propaganda, lies and innuendos.

 .—"Our electoral politics and processes are the source of wonder and amusement for our European allies—who debate rather than defame their opponents. That was also analyzed by Professor Singh. But it seems to me that for intelligent people this continual negative propaganda is a real turnoff.

 —"But you forget that we are really psychological and not logical. This was the major point of Dr. Chan's ideas. (20)

 .—"Ya, I almost forgot. I guess that is why we Americans must always be holding our guns. If it is not a valid political use of violence, as in World War II, we just shoot each other as a means of letting off steam. Whether it is a shooting to settle a family squabble or a massacre like in Columbine or Aurora, we seem to have to be shooting at someone! I guess that a fight to the death is as old as homo sapiens, so how much more conservative can we get?

 —Then what do you see as the elements of your liberal political stance?

WHAT IS A LIBERAL

 —"Well, one thing, is that we believe in equality to a large degree. The thinking in the West for over 100 years has moved toward equality as being an essential element of a modern political and economic system. While you have pointed out that nature indicates that we are unequal, a just society would try to equalize things to make the overall society more pleasant. We have mentioned the happiness of the Scandinavian countries, led by Denmark, as being the happiest people in the world in spite of the fact that their taxes are among the highest in the world.

"Another liberal idea is that killing is bad. We reject the biblical and Koranic ideas of capital punishment. Every life is important. But then we don't believe that life starts at conception. It is far more likely that we will believe that life starts at birth. Along with this anti-killing bias we have, we are against war. We would much rather use diplomacy and sanctions to get our way with another country than to take up our guns and canons and attack them. Of coarse we realize that there are times when the conservatives or reactionaries leave us no alternative, so we are forced to fight.

"Just as the conservatives usually believe in the equality of opportunity, we believe in it wholeheartedly. But we realize that some of our equally human brothers and sisters have made non-intelligent decisions about their lives or that other brothers and sisters have mental or physical problems that do not allow them to enjoy life to the fullest. We think we need to help them. And we believe that that help should require them to study and work to their capacities.

"Because we are forward-looking, not backward looking like conservatives, we are eager to solve the problems with what modern medical and physical science gives us. For example, if a person makes a non-intelligent decision to have unprotected sex and a pregnancy results, we are willing to allow for abortion. Of course we prefer contraception. Many conservatives disagree with both of these positions.

"Rather than let a person die or live a hapless life, we want to help people to live more fully, even if this requires that the government spend money on this idea. We think that people should have health insurance, preferably government paid through increased taxes. Our American system is unconscionable. It has us ranked about 40th in the world in healthcare and yet we pay more than any other country for that low level of care, The conservatives don't want healthcare but if it is to be, the capitalists should make a great deal of money on it rather than have the government involved which would cost much much less.

"We believe we should pay for what we get by increased taxes. The conservatives want smaller government and much lower taxes. We don't think that our equalitarian ideas can be handled by freewheeling capitalists whose only concern is money. Bigger government is essential if we are to have an equalitarian program. But for the past half century in the United States, we see that it is the conservatives with their low tax ideas who were forced to borrow from other countries to pay for what the citizens wanted. Looking back at history we find that the liberal Democrats actually reduced the national debt more often than did the Republicans. Only recently, because of the borrowing of the conservatives, particularly since Reagan and particularly during the reign of George Bush, borrowing went way up because of conservative policies. Only liberal Bill Clinton was able to reduce it a bit. Liberal Barack Obama was forced to borrow more money to get us out of the debts caused by the conservatives, particularly George Bush.

"Another area where we disagree with the conservatives is in the eternal truths of the Scriptures of the West. If we are religious, we are more likely to want to include the findings of science to substitute for or to update the writings of ancient prophets.

"Just as we take an expanded view of religion and science, in our international relations we are more likely to see beyond our country in terms of solving the world's problems. The conservatives tend to see America exclusively, as the only concern for our politics. We also see America first, but we see it in relation to other countries and we are more likely to allow them to follow their own democratic decisions. The conservatives are more likely to work to change the direction and decisions of other nations so that America will profit more by that change.

"If I were going to put it on a continuum, I would use the ideas that Chuck Chan (21) used when he talked about the power-to-love continuum with love being unselfish and inclusive. The conservatives would be on the power end and we liberals would be closer to the 'love' end. We are more expansive in our outlooks for our fellow human beings and for the ideal society that will allow most people to flourish."

 —"You paint a very pretty picture for you liberals. What we have here in The Colonies is a mixture of what you have been explaining. We have a much stronger equality of education possibility than either your liberals or conservatives have developed in America. In terms of religion we are way past your liberals in being primarily atheists. And we are probably beyond your conservatives in not being particularly interested in helping people to help themselves. In fact if you remember how we allow drug dependent people to remove themselves from society in our drug houses, where they work enough to pay for their room and board and drugs and we don't care if they come out dead or cured. We just want them out of our society so they won't rob us and burglarize our houses. The same is true in our prisons. If they don't work to buy their food and pay for their cell, they die. And we don't care. So we are probably even to the right of your libertarians.

SLAVERY

"One area where we do agree with you is in our opposition to human trafficking and other kinds of slavery. We object to it primarily because the people have no equality of opportunity to achieve and it is a non-responsible way to handle people who have not been given the chance. You remember that our freedom requires responsibility to respect the freedom of others. Human trafficking treats people as things. It is therefore totally irresponsible. As you probably know there are estimated to be 21 million people kept as slaves, prostitutes or indentured servants—over 1,500,000 in the US, Canada and Europe; about that many in Russia, the Balkans and Turkey; about 3 1/2 million in Africa and nearly 12,000,000 in India, China and Southeast Asia. Last year only 42,000 of them were freed according to US State Department. (22) Mauritania was the last country to abolish slavery. It criminalized it in 2007. Only one slave owner has been successfully prosecuted. In fact, the anti-slavery groups are more likely to be imprisoned and tortured.

ECONOMIC EQUALITY

"Economic inequality is seen in the whole continuum from slaves, to impoverished people, to the middle class, the wealthy and to multi billionaires like Carlos Slim and Bill Gates. Whether it is professional athletes or actors or CEOs of major corporations there are huge differences in incomes. For example in 2011 Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook was awarded $378 million in compensation. He led all CEOs in pay. A distant second was the Oracle CEO" who only made $77 million. But the CEO business is not really that lucrative, with the median compensation of the top 100 being only $14 million. If you want money it might be more fun to be a pro athlete.

"Auto racer Fernando Alonso earned $40,000,000, American football player Charles Johnson earned 34 million, while baseball player Alex Rodriguez was paid $30,000,000 and basketballer Kobe Bryant $25,244,000. But soccer star Wayne Rooney only took home $21 million. If you don't mind being punched in the nose you might be the next Manny Pacquiao with his $50,000,000. If you like to fish and can equal Kevin VanDam's $706,500 you would probably have to pick up a part-time CEO job to make ends meet. Of course if you like to golf you could earn over $9 million if you can equal Luke Donald's winnings. If you yearn to be a beach bum you might collect $300,000 as a pro volleyballer or over a half million surfing.

"If you like to pretend, you might try acting in movies. Perhaps you could equal Johnny Depp's $100 million or Leonardo DiCaprio's $62 million."

  "The idea of equality has gone past an idea of equal political rights and has been championed by many to require equal economic outcomes. Karl Marx, of course, took that view to its ultimate end with his idea of economic equality for all. We have called those who seek equality at a faster rate, than the society wants to give it, the 'liberals.' We call those who resist expanding the idea of equality and who champion the idea of liberty the 'conservatives.' And a few like me are more conservative than most conservatives. Some call us reactionaries. But there are a lot of us in the U.S. now. In fact many call us the base of the Republican Party. Of course there is more to being a liberal or a conservative than one's emphasis on economic equality—but it is a basic tenet. The liberals want socialized medicine and state pensions. The conservatives criticize these ideas. And of course neither wants to tax to provide them."

 —"Ray, you can see that to the degree that we give people money or comforts that they have not earned we take away from those who have earned them. It has been said that for every day that a person is paid without working another person must work without pay. These gifts to the poor and to their children, the educational and health expenses which they enjoy, as well as the food, lodging, and recreational facilities of the imprisoned must come from a citizen's work.

"I would certainly agree that by their very presence in the country all citizens consent to some taxation--for cleaning the streets, for education, for an army for defense, for roadways and the like. Many however have objected to the intrusion into their pocketbooks for money that they have not consented to give. You remember that a major reason for our Revolutionary War was 'taxation without representation.' Those liberal legislators and liberal judges have picked their pockets and left them with far less than they have earned."

"The socialists of the world, the liberals in the economic sphere, have attempted to economically level their populations. The gap between the rich and the poor must be reduced. All must have health care from cradle to grave. Why? Because we are all equal! Our needs, not our productivity, are primary. The earlier concept of political democracy, where every adult cast an equal vote, evolved into a philosophy in which other forms of equality flowed from the voting booth and into all areas of life. Why? Because we are equal!"

EQUALITY

 .--"But what basic assumptions allow for, or require, such equality? We don't need such basic assumptions. We just ARE equal. Everyone knows it.

 —"No, I say. The basic assumption which allows this total equality springs from God. The godless societies do not want to admit it. Karl Marx would turn over in his grave if he realized this. But the only reason that can be given for total equality is that we are created by God and have equal souls.

 .-- "That sounds far afield. Why equal souls?"

 —"Because, unless we are made in the "image of God," and have that bit of infinity that only God possesses, we cannot be equal. Our bodies are not equal. Our potentials and abilities are not equal. The only factor that can give us legitimacy for a goal which will result in equality from the beginning to the end of life is some unseen essential in us all which is equal. That must be the soul."

 —"In the West we have been raised in a cradle of Judaism, Islam and Christianity which assumes a God. Our powerful assumption is so strong that even many atheists embrace the idea of equality. It is understandable that at Karl Marx's funeral his patron and collaborator, Frederich Engels, said that "perhaps we didn't go deep enough in our assumptions." That is true. He assumed a basic equality without ever addressing how or why we might be equal.

"As a young man I had occasion to talk to a professor of communism at the Moscow University. While he hadn't thought of the reasons for the Marxian assumptions, he agreed that there was no real basis for equality in Marxism. Karl had thrown out religion as "the opiate of the masses" but had kept the ideas of Christianity. He had thrown out the basic assumptions but had kept the ethics that were derived from those God-based assumptions. Such an illogical jump, while common in our normal human discourse, is unforgivable in the area of philosophy and social planning.

"Recently I had the opportunity to have dinner with one of the world's great peace researchers. As is my habit, I came to this discussion of equality and my reasoning that it must be based upon a belief in God. She did not agree but could not come up with a reason for her own deep feelings of our total human equality. As I pushed the issue she became angry. She could not defend her belief without a resort to God. And she refused to bring God into our intellectual arena.

"I think that the democratically raised human psyches of today will not soon turn back from the path of equality. It is too deeply ingrained to be questioned. The people of Western Europe, especially the north, as well as the United States and Canada generally have strong beliefs in equality. These people generally do not have the philosophical strength nor the independence of thinking that will allow them to change."

 —"Not all who believe in God believe that we have equal souls. And if we do not, there is no reason to espouse a totally equalitarian society. Aristotle held that we started with equal souls but because of our unequal bodies our souls became unequal. Thomas Aquinas, although a follower of Aristotle, believed in both an equality and an inequality of humans. He believed in Aristotle's idea of the souls becoming unequal as they aged but he saw an equal creation and an equal end--the Last Judgment. Great thinkers such as St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus held that God had actually created unequal souls. Still it seems that much of modern theology is influenced by the ideal of democracy, and postulates a basic and permanent equality among people.

 —"The idea of equality shows up early in the Bible. 'The rich and poor meet together—the Lord is master of them all.' (23) And Malachi 2:10 states that 'Have not all one father?

"While total equality must be based on an idea of God creating equal souls, liberty does not require such a basis. It is obvious that people are different. That difference calls for the freedom to race toward whatever goal one finds enticing."

 —"The most solid thinking was done by the Greeks. But while they didn't believe in actual equality, they did believe in some equalitarian ideals, as shown in their early use of democratic principles. (24) But people filled society in different levels. Justice was therefore the equal treatment of equals, not equal treatment for all. (25)

"The founders of modern democracies, such as those in the United States, France, and the Scandinavian countries have advocated liberty as well as equality. The reasons for their revolutions from their oppressors were generally a feeling that the leaders of the revolution were not given the same freedom to achieve as those who were in power. As soon as the revolution had been completed the constitutions enacted demanded liberty—not equality.

"An essential for liberty is equality of opportunity. This includes equality of educational opportunity, an equality of the sexes before the law, and the equal opportunity for minorities to compete in the same arenas as the majority. Certainly for any society to prosper it must have its best people leading and producing. That, of course, is our major value here in The Colonies.

"Do not be mislead by the phrase 'equality of opportunity.' It is a principle of liberty, not equality. Equal opportunity is demanded by every liberal and conservative. Only the reactionary, who wants to protect past interests, rather than achieve in the future, rebels at such a requirement. It has long been recognized that society must be open to the best if it is to prosper. Aristotle said that it is doubly unequal when a person is not in his proper niche in society. He is treated unfairly because he has not been placed in a high enough spot and the person who occupies that place is unfairly treated because he is in a spot too high."

 \--"Our psychological natures, particularly as they protect against our inferiority complexes, (27) frequently give rise to protect our statuses when we are not entitled to them. When a person in a religious or ethnic majority is threatened by a superior person from another religion or race it is natural that he call "foul." He must then join a group to protect his "rights." The Nazi party, the Jewish Defense League, the black supremacy groups, and the Ku Klux Klan are such examples in my country. Similar groups that organize against both the legitimate rise of minorities in the business and political circles and the perhaps illegitimate rise of the minorities who were collecting from the welfare state continue to be organized.

"So, as thinking people, what must we hold as basic to our concept of justice? Just how much liberty and how much equality do we want? How much is fair? How much will we allow? How can our society best prosper? We can't have it all. There are not enough natural resources on the planet and not enough financial resources in the treasury to allow unlimited births then unlimited access to the good life. Something must go. What will it be?"

 \--"The modern nations of today, such as Singaling and Kino, (28) are in the Orient. Their basic assumptions are not the same as the countries in the West. They have not been crippled by the modern concept of total equality. The people are spurred by the opportunity for liberty and their economies and personal comforts have profited by their approach.

"It seems to me that these Judeo-Christian based countries cannot escape the rut in which they find themselves. They are victims to the common malady that affects us all--we feel, then we mistake our feelings for thinking. We seem to be chasing the lemmings. And, like these non-thinking rodents, we have created our own destruction."

 —"In the United Kingdom today the legislators are working to limit immigration in order to balance the budget. So many immigrants, especially asylum-seekers, avail themselves of the welfare benefits and the free hospitalization allowed. But when illegal immigrants bring their plights to the courts they are more likely to win. So the legislatures are shackled with the job of balancing the budget's and hopefully, getting people to work, while the liberal courts, who don't have any financial responsibility, put these poor immigrants into the public welfare system. So we have the courts believing in a totally equality of people while dealing with individual people one by one. On the other hand the legislature must deal with the realities of finances and the need to control the gross population of the country. (29)

 .—"Politicians all say they value education and health care. People approve of those values so they vote those politicians in. But when they get into office they seem to forget their promises. Policemen and firemen usually make much more in salaries than teachers and nurses. But of course it is important that your house doesn't burn down. But isn't it just as important that your children grow up as intelligent, creative and thinking adults?

"Recent surveys have indicated that at least half of politicians have gone to school at some time in their lives. Even kings usually go to school for a few years. And while people like Bill Gates dropped out of college but was still able to contribute immensely to humanity's quest for a better life, others like Nobel chemistry and medicine prize winners have contributed to our well being even though they finished their Ph.D.s.

ARE WE EQUAL?

 —"The first problem to discuss, I guess, is whether or not we are actually equal."

 —"In what way are you exactly equal to Anders Breivik, the Norwegian man who killed 77 people through his bomb in central Oslo and his shooting of youth at the summer camp at Ut-oya. In what way are you exactly equal to Adolf Hitler? In what way are you exactly equal to Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison?

"Equality means exactly the same. It does not mean nearly the same. 1+ !=2, not 3, not 2.001. We probably never have exact equality. While the theory of equality before the law sounds good, it probably seldom happens. In a criminal case, the rich man can afford the best attorneys while the poor man must make do with court-appointed lawyers who do not have time to research the case effectively, call in the best witnesses, or argue with the expertise of an experienced trial lawyer. But I want to get into the basis for equality later. Let's talk about liberty for a while."

"If you are accosted on the street and a mugger gives you a choice 'your money or your life,' you have a certain amount of freedom. You have a choice. But obviously you do not have total freedom. We are unfree if our body is restrained or our will is coerced."

 —"The laws of one's society, the dictates of your religion, and the traditions of your family and neighborhood all impinge upon your freedom. If you want to join a commune, your family will probably object. If you want to become an atheist, your priest will object. If you want to drive 100 miles an hour, the police will object. So there is no question that our freedoms are at least somewhat restricted by outside influences."

 —"The flipside of that is whether your family or your nation should be more concerned about your welfare than you are. Should a person who smokes get as much costly medical care for lung cancer or heart disease, as a person who has never smoked? Should a sun worshiper get as much critical care for skin cancer as one who has not been in the sun? Should the skier who smashed his back on a rock get as much costly medical care as one who was hit by a car at no fault of their own?

 —"Good points. But there is another factor to consider. If we were to have absolute liberty to do whatever we want, 'license' as we call it, it could affect others' liberty. So liberty must be tempered by responsibility to respect the liberty of others.

"You can have freedom, or liberty, in many areas—political, social, economic, religious and so forth. The basic political liberties are: freedom of speech, assembly, liberty of conscience, freedom of thought, right to ownership, and rights related to the rule of law. There should certainly be no hereditary privilege, such as with monarchies or some dictatorships. And, as you know, we severely limit financial inheritances here in The Colonies.

 —"But if people are unequal, how do we determine what they deserve? Do they deserve anything?"

 —"They probably do, the question is just what? In order for a society to function, if we're going to have a lot of people at the bottom of the social and economic scale, they need to be given enough so they don't rebel. Just what that minimum is might be determined by how many there are. If there are enough to carry on a legitimate rebellion, they need to be kept happy enough to keep their guns in their closets. Or maybe they shouldn't have the liberty of even keeping guns!"

 —"We should probably even re-think certain equal liberties such as the right to vote, which many don't use. Equality before the law is a noble goal, but with lawyers milking the system--winning the case, not achieving justice, becomes the objective of the litigators. So an actual equality before the law becomes suspect.

 —"And maybe the freedom of religion, too, if people haven't actually thought their way into their belief. Just because your mother accepted the unprovable faith of her mother, then told you it was true does not seem to me to be valid enough to give you an unquestionable right to your belief any more than a psychotic with delusions of grandeur should be believed when he claims to be Napoleon. And in my country, the right to bear arms makes our criminals and private citizens deadlier.

"But let me change the subject. I think there is a lot to be said for the utilitarian idea. You may remember that utilitarianism as an ethical or political system that requires many to sacrifice so that others can be happier— having the greatest good for the greatest number."

 —"That is sure the ultimate of equalitarian thinking. But I have a couple of questions. Must a principle of justice be universally agreed to or is a majority enough?"

 \- "It depends on the society. In China, the ruling group within the Communist Party determines what is just. In a dictatorship the dictator determines what is just. In a republic the elected representatives decide. So you can see that the power elite is the group or person who decides on justice. If you had a very small group, such as the Swiss canton or a New England town meeting, you might be able to have justice determined by that small group for its small area. But even there, they would be subject to the laws and judicial principles of the greater society.

"For example, in our society we allow for religious beliefs only if they are verifiable. Your country allows for a total freedom of beliefs no matter how outlandish they are. However some of your court cases have limited how much those beliefs can be put into practice.

"But now I would like to introduce a recent major theory of justice. John Rawls, a Harvard professor, developed a theory of justice based on equality. Like Marx and Engels and so many theories of fairness, he didn't go into why he believed that people are equal, or if not equal, why they are entitled to any material equality. For him, a human equality of entitlement existed. But recognizing an inequality of talents and opportunities he allowed for some to achieve high as long as that achievement benefitted others too. He talked about 'luck inequalities,' such as privileges of birth or talent, which he said might need to be equalized. (30)

"As you remember, here in The Colonies we adjust the luck of birth by our death tax. We don't attempt to equalize the rewards of talent, only a person's work ethic and education can even this out.

 —"Why 'even out' the results when things still turn out unequal? Liberty, or freedom, seems to be universally desired—at least in terms of not being restrained. But when that liberty does not result in an economic featherbed, we often want an equality of results."

 —"That is the difference between social liberty and social equality. In pure liberty people want an equal starting line. In pure equality people want both an equal starting line and an equal finishing line. In the early days of professional track and field, the fastest runners were handicapped by having to start further behind the slower runners. The bettors then could assume that all the runners had an equal chance to win. We do this in horseracing where it is assumed that for every 2 pounds added to the weight of the jockey the horse will be slowed by about one length. So in a handicap race perfect starting handicaps in weight would result in a dead heat of all the horses at the finish line."

 —" I can see some advantages to your inequalitarian basis for liberty but there are certainly times when we must take care of each other. While I like the social welfare systems that I see, I can see some advantages to your approach to using the carrot and stick. Still there are certain times when I believe the society must come to the rescue of some people. It may be giving money while a person is learning new skills in an educational setting or it may be when an older person is incapacitated and needs help. I think that all men are brothers.

"Look at what has happened to the tyrants of North Africa and the Middle East. Too many have-nots for the society to handle. In Egypt they took over the government without force. In Libya they took up guns. In Russia hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets. In the US it has not been as evident even though the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have their counterparts in many other parts of the country. The 'rabble,' whatever their nation, have similar needs and aspirations."

 —"But no matter how equal people like to say they are, they are not twins! Perhaps, you need to think a little more deeply into how society can find the resources to take care of those on the bottom of the society, for those in need. Do you plan to tax the people on top down to a level where they will be on the bottom with the others? It reminds me of an article I saw on ethics where two Italian philosophers were suggesting that infanticide was possibly acceptable because a newborn baby is not yet a person. Some of the bioethicists were appalled by this idea. But as you probably know, bioethicists, judges, priests and ministers, mass murderers and the common man all start our ethical thinking from non-provable starting points. Then we attach evidence to those unprovable bases. (31) But it gets more complicated when we add in the elements that have been added to the concept of Athenian democracy. And, of course, the various contradictory beliefs of what the God of the Mideast expects of us add to our confusion.

"No one can prove when a fertilized ovum, newborn baby or adult is a person-- and therefore somehow deserving of life or any benefits that society gives to that life. With capital punishment we have determined that a human being is not deserving of the right to life. Traitors to their country often must forfeit their lives. These values are merely definitions without any solid scientific backing.

"If we leave what we believe our religion teaches us and examine what is good for society, we may determine that not all lives are valuable to the society. In fact if we look through history we find very few individuals who are deserving of intellectual sainthood. When a child is born with extensive physical or mental problems that will cost the society a great deal of money that could have been used for education or other valuable societal needs, why should that child drain other goods from society. In Norway today the admitted and unrepentant mass murderer of more than 70 people will drain many millions of dollars from the society. Norway, although possibly the world's richest country, presently has problems funding its hospitals and kindergartens. Is society really better off defending and imprisoning the admitted mass murderer or would it be better served lopping off his head now? There is little question that schools and hospitals in Norway would be better served with that money. And if they did not need the money in Norway, there are plenty of countries that could use it."

 .—"But there is that democratic principle that has developed that guarantees equality before the law. Of course we in the legal game have worked to make certain that every criminal gets free legal help no matter how terrible his crime and how certain the evidence is against him. After all, we lawyers have to eat too!"

 —"You eat too well, live too well, and drive your fancy cars at the expense of us taxpayers. I read that U.S. firms spent twice as much money on litigation as on research and development. (32) So you are definitely hurting our economy and our country while you selfishly line your own pockets."

  —"You forget that I am one of the two ethical lawyers in our country! I have never taken a dollar of taxpayer money, I have never sued a doctor and I have never chased an ambulance. But, your criticism of many people in our society is valid. The self-centered natures of so many people and the accumulation of money as the ultimate source of prestige and power is certainly a major factor in the deterioration of our country. But I have been wondering just how much our growing income inequality is a factor in the increasing belief that we are all entitled to the so-called entitlements if we are poor, sick, old or jobless."

 —"You probably remember when the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, said that the entitlements that were ruining our country. He said they were not only bankrupting our country financially but also morally because so many people felt that they didn't have to work or to pay enough money to take care of their pensions and health needs.

"It seems to be an affliction of the welfare-state Western countries. Not many people enjoy paying taxes but they expect and enjoy the comfort in knowing that Big Brother will take care of us better than we would take care of ourselves. But just about every Western country is in financial quicksand because they elect leaders who promise financial equality to those who haven't earned it.

"As we know from the financial problems of Greece, there is only so much money to run a society. Idealists who want to prevent the abortions of unwanted children, or even those who would prevent infanticide or capital punishment, must weigh their ideals against the financial costs of those ideals in a world where not everything good can be afforded.

"Our Republican Party seems to want low taxes but to have all unwanted babies born—because they are against abortion. But each of those unwanted children will cost about $200,000 to educate through high school. If they go to public colleges the cost is increased. Then we know that unwanted children are much more likely to go to prison, at a cost of $50,000 per year. Then there are the increased costs of police and the judicial system. They certainly haven't thought through their ideas."

 —"That's the same kind of thinking Dr. Wang in Kino (33) told us about. The conflicts between self-centered, God based and society based ethics continue to plague our societies. Our self centered natures want to get more than we give. Our religions promise us a bright future in heaven if we will only curb our selfish desires, and give them money. But society requires certain responsibilities from us, like taxes and military service, in return it says it will protect us. But the society is run by self-interested politicians. So we have pushes and pulls in all directions.

 —"The job of businesses is to finish the year in the black. The job of politicians who want to be re-elected is to finish the year in the red--giving the electorate more than they are willing to pay for.

 —"Let's look a little more deeply at liberty. Liberty may be viewed in at least three different ways. One is where the most superior person or people, the great warriors or politically aware leaders, have ultimate liberty and control as many people as they want. It seems that this has been the most common expression of liberty—the survival of the fittest. Nietzsche's 'overman' the truly human person who excelled in typical human areas such as: warfare, religion, art or philosophy might qualify here, but Nietzsche's view was that superior people needed to have freedom to develop. So that might be the third category to discuss. The other approaches to liberty deal with negative or positive liberty—the absence of restraints or the opportunity to achieve. Let us first discuss justice as being that which allows for greatness for the few.

DEFINITIONS, BASIC ASSUMPTIONS AND NON-FACTUAL BELIEFS

JUSTICE AS A SOCIAL CONTRACT

"Our real-world politics don't often coincide with the Enlightenment ideas that we should have a social compact. We should agree on the principles behind our laws and on the laws themselves. This contract assumes some equality among those who develop and adhere to it. While it is true that most people in a society share certain motivations and traditions which give them a somewhat consistent point of view relative to what the society should be, a problem is that our views are subjective but nature is objective. The truth of nature may not comport with our subjective needs and values. Then, what we want or hope for may not be possible in an objective world. If we all want a million dollars from the state but are willing to be only taxed a thousand dollars, there is going to be a $999,000 shortfall in our economic dream state.

"While many philosophers would hope that we citizens are future directed, the realities are that most of us are living in and for the present. How many bank robbers or murderers think of their futures in prison if they are caught? How many overweight people think of the calories settling forever on their hips from every piece of candy and every cookie they gobble? How many politicians think that their pre-election promises will be remembered by their constituents? How many pregnant 14 year olds think of the costs and problems of raising their children for the next 20 years?

 \--"I guess when people think of justice they probably have to hope, with psychologist Abraham Maslow, that needs are met in the hierarchy he suggested. (34) We have the physiological needs for food and water, and the safety needs of shelter and security. Economic equality such as food stamps and housing allowances would satisfy these. Then we have the need for love. The only way that society can provide this is if it can make certain that all children are born to parents who can support them financially and emotionally. And it is not that easy to find people who are actually capable of loving unselfishly. Many of us assume that parents will do that, but the realities are that many children are beaten, sexually abused and even killed. And those that are not subjected to such abuses still may not have parents who are psychologically able to love in an unselfish way. Maslow's fourth level is self-esteem. That is certainly an important part of the system of justice because we all like to think that we are important and should be treated fairly.

"It seems that along with these ideas part of our idea of justice is that it fulfills the expectations we have for living adequately. And as I have said, for satisfying the criteria that Maslow has put before us. I didn't mention his highest level, what he called the meta-level. If we have competencies to fulfill our high-level needs in areas such as philosophy, art or social causes and we are frustrated in doing them, we feel that it is unjust. But of course we must have the competencies to achieve in these areas at a high-level. What we want may not be compatible with our intelligence or abilities.

"With all of these desires that we have, we also have the responsibility to work hard to make them happen. We must be responsible for our own behavior. Every system of justice requires this.

 —"I talked about the writings of John Rawls on justice. He said that everyone should be entitled to the same basic liberties and that where inequalities exist they must benefit the least advantaged as well as those who are gifted in a society. Everyone should have the opportunity to fill any office or social or economic position if he or she has the talent to do so. This may result in inequalities, but if all gain from such inequalities it is a plus for the society. For example if the best person is elected president and is paid more than others, all should benefit to some degree from that election. If a person becomes a medical doctor, professor or a financier and all benefit from that person in that position—it is 'just.'"

 —"I see that his assumption of equality pervades his theory of justice."

 —"True. Most modern-day theorists of justice would assume the truth or the ideal of equality. But then on the other side you have Nietzsche who assumed inequality as the basis for justice."

REQUIREMENTS FOR A JUST SOCIETY

"While we are speaking of a just society, what elements other than liberty or equality would you think are important?"

 —"I would certainly think that honesty is essential.

"From the reading I did in college, as well as in space, it seems that there are several elements to justice. When I read about the corruption in most nations of the world, it makes me think that we are a long way from justice. The Chinese are certainly fighting it. The hunger strikes of Anna Hazare seems to have made little dent in India's corruption protection in the laws. The United Nations and the OECD are working on reducing corruption but progress is very slow.

 —"Along with that idea of honesty, you certainly should not have corruption and bribery in a just society. The OECD Anti-bribery convention recently released reports on Japan, Italy and Switzerland. They all showed that they were nowhere near achieving the anti-bribery goals relative to bribing public officials. Switzerland had only convicted one person in the last 12 years for bribery. Corruption certainly does not help to develop a just society.(35) "And certainly faith and charity are important."

 —"An opportunity for education that is not indoctrination, but rather an education that is eclectic in terms of evaluating all of our beliefs. We must look in greater detail at the sciences, at history, and philosophies, and even at religions."

 —"I don't see how you could allow for treason in the just society. Maybe that goes back to the idea of honesty.

 .—"In spite of what you say, Kelsi, I think that some sort of equality of economics is essential. With the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, society does not function as well because people are too unhappy. When you get the general population opposing the power groups, something has to give and recently we have seen that the top gets tumbled. It was certainly evident in the Arab spring of 2011. The Occupy Wall Street groups brought attention to the fact in US. I don't know if you saw the Pew survey (36) that indicated that in the last two years those people who saw rising tensions between the rich and poor has increased from 47% to 66%. That was a 40% increase in two years."

 —"That's true Lee, but the people still believed that it was possible to rise up through the social classes by hard work."

 —"I would assume also that there should be some consensus in a society. When it is all top-down, there seems to be little chance that many breadcrumbs will fall to the bottom. And when you have no breadcrumbs to munch on you tend to get a bit riled up because those on the top are gobbling pheasants and lobsters and drinking champagne, while those on the bottom are scraping by on bread and water. And no matter how poor we are we think we have infinite value at least to ourselves. This makes us want to at least handle our basic needs. We may be content with a 90-10 split between rich and poor, but when it gets to be 99 to 1 we don't see it as being very fair. That is when we are pushed to the edge and revolt. King George, King Louis, Qaddafi and others assumed that either we are content, stupid or easily controlled. They were wrong. So I think there is no question that for a society to survive the economic distance between the top and bottom cannot be too great. I don't know just what level that is, whether it is 90-10, 80-20 or 99-1, at some level financial festering will create that economic boiling point that will erupt and the overwhelming discontent will lead to revolution. A just society would not want were allow this."

 —"I wonder if we can judge the justice of a society by how happy the people are. If so the Danes come out on top. Other social welfare states also rank high with Finland second, Norway third, and the Netherlands fourth. The U.S ranked 11th and had less social welfare than any of the higher ranking countries. Is this a victory for equality as the major component of justice?"(37)

 —"My country was not involved in that survey, but we, like Nietzsche, look for happiness in our most productive citizens—and I am certain they are quite content.

 -"But back to honestly. An absolute essential is that the people be honest. But it seems that because people are usually so self-centered and intent on their own interests, whether it be making money or amassing some other kind of power, ethics and the good of society fall by the wayside. If you are to achieve whatever power is within your reach, honesty becomes a secondary virtue for most."

 —"We seem to keep going back to Wanda Wang in Kino (38) and Chuck Chan in Singaling (39) for our ethical and psychological groundings. I didn't realize their importance at the time. I'm beginning to see that our psychological and ethical makeups are important in developing political techniques as well as in developing a theory of justice.

"From what I know, the most honest countries are Norway and Denmark. At least some studies that I know of have shown that to be true. Certainly without honesty there can be no trust.

"Look at the problems in Europe back in 2011. The Greeks seemed to have had the biggest problem, and 25% of their gross domestic product is in the black market. I know when I've been there and have a restaurant dinner where they had said that I could use my credit card, when I went to pay the bill their credit card machine was out of order or if they tried to call it to the bank the bank's phone was disconnected. So naturally I had to pay cash. Tax evasion like this costs the Greek government about 22 billion euros in lost taxes per year. The Greek debt had increased from $239 billion in 2007 to 329 billion in 2010. That's a 42% increase in just four years. And you know that in Greece you don't pay taxes on a house until it is finished. For that reason many houses remain unfinished. You see the re-bar sticking out of the roof and assume that another floor is to be added—but it never is!

And in Italy the economy was much bigger and 20% of its business was in the black market, so it was untaxed. (40) The fact is that these countries have so many dishonest people, and it was at every level of the economic ladder, so the national debt was astronomical and the interest on the bonds to finance the debt kept going up. So the cheaters were costing everyone more in interest payments. And they were responsible for the crashing of their economies and prolonging or increasing their national and international problems.

"Every country has some corruption, but there is a huge difference in the amount according to the Transparency International figures. Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore are the least corrupt nations of the world. They all scored 9.3 of a possible 10. These are closely followed by Finland, Sweden, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia. The US was 22nd in the world and fourth in the Western Hemisphere behind Canada, Chile and the Barbados. When we look at Europe, of the 30 countries with Denmark number one, Italy was 27th in Europe and 67th in the world with a score of 3.9. Greece was last in Europe and 70th of the world with a score of 3.5. When we look at those very religious Muslim countries of the Mideast we see that Iraq was near the bottom of the world, number 175, with a score of 1.6 and Iran, with a score of 2.2, was 156th. Then Afghanistan was at the bottom with a score of about 1.3. China was 87th in the world and India 78th.

"How can we ever get a just utopia with so many crooks in business and politics?"

 —"Here is another thought on honesty. Either Estonia or Sweden is the least religious country in the world with less than 20% believing in a God. Denmark is third, Norway fourth. They are also the most honest and happiest countries. This would seem to indicate that religion does not make you honest or happy.

"In terms of honesty for one society, I think of all those people who hide their money in Switzerland or other offshore areas and make money but do not show it to their own nations for tax purposes. Did you hear of the treaty that they worked on between Germany and Switzerland that would require Switzerland to report to Germany income made by German citizens and deposited in numbered bank accounts in Switzerland? Germany expects to pick up billions of dollars in taxes from the treaty.

"And I know so many people who cheat on their income taxes by lying about how much money they gave to charities, how much they spend on medical expenses, how much they paid in taxes in all kinds of other deductions. That's on the personal level. At the corporate level lobbyists for businesses have established all sorts of loopholes so that some of the biggest companies don't pay any taxes at all. In fact they often get billions of dollars in various subsidies from our government. Then there are those people getting farm subsidies when they have never farmed. Well anyway, honesty is one essential factor for the best society--for the most 'just' society. What other ideas do you have Kelsi?"

  —"We have much less of a problem because our taxes are in the 1 to 2% range. And our extremely high inheritance taxes are easily monitored and the appeal to honor as a national priority is deeply ingrained in us from our earliest years."

RESPONSIBILITY

 —"Political freedom requires responsibility—to educate oneself on the issues, to vote with enlightened self interest, to serve on juries, to work for intelligent well meaning candidates.

 —"But freedom is not a natural state of humans. This is particularly true when they are expected to display the responsibility that is necessary for true liberty. When we look at some tribes of monkeys we see a dominant leader emerge and all willingly follow. This has been the rule since the dawn of humanity. It is obvious that every tyrant believes in freedom for himself. Some obviously have more of a drive for power to dominate than do others.

"A question might be why are we so easily subjugated? Is it merely because most humans, as other animals, are not very smart or don't have enough of the drive for power to be able to lead independent lives. Perhaps simple liberties such as the right to vote or the right to believe any absurdity is all we really need. When we are told we are free, we can easily be led by those who want to exercise their own liberty at the expense of the rest of us in the society.

"There are those of us who hope that responsible liberty will be possible through education and intelligent value orientations? But a free society is rare in history and never without those who abuse their freedom by hurting or enslaving others in the society. We see it in gangs and sweat shops at the local level and in terrorist regimes at the national and international levels.

"But the major factors are whether equality or inequality is seen as fundamental. If it is inequality then liberty would be the major value. This would require equality of opportunity. If we are actually equal then equality should probably be accorded from cradle-to-grave and social welfare systems should be major parts of the society.

"Another related factor is the ethical system that one chooses. The political theory is usually tied to the ethical system of the society. Sometimes they are so deeply intertwined that people do not recognize their ties. As we mentioned, John Rawls is a major, if not the major, commentator on justice. But if you read his theories you see that they are based on an equalitarian ethic. And we certainly don't buy it here in The Colonies.

"But there are other areas relevant to justice. The safety of the population may be a factor related to justice. In the first decade of this century there were a number of earthquakes in Ohio and Oklahoma that were related to 'fracking.' In fracking the natural gas companies inject liquid wastes into deep cracks and shale below the Earth's surface. This pushes out natural gas. But it also can contaminate groundwater. The question here is what is just? There is the need for natural gas for energy. There is a need for jobs for those who produce the gas. There are certainly profits for business people who find gas and sell it. But there is the danger of earthquakes and contaminated groundwater. So you see the justice of situation depends on which side of the equation you are on.

  "About the same time, President Obama appointed a head of the consumer Financial Protection Board, he was doing what the American people needed. But the question was did he do it according to the law which required that the Senate be in recess in order for him to have the option of such an appointment. It was only a three day recess. The politics of the day were for the Senate to fight anything that Obama proposed but the American people had just gone through several years of unemployment, bankruptcy and home foreclosures. They definitely needed someone to look after their needs nationally. The first question, in terms of justice, is whether or not the Senate was in recess. The previous Tuesday it had met for 30 seconds. While theoretically the Senate was in session, the sessions were pro forma meaning that no business was to be enacted but the rules require that if either house of Congress is out of session for more than three days it must notify the other. Therefore both houses often use the pro forma meetings to get around the technicality without actually having any business to conduct. If the people needed a watchdog committee to look after their financial interests and possibly prevent another recession due to the economic laxity of the previous administration and the banks, where is justice in this situation? Should the concern be what the people need or is it the technical application of a law while Congress is not doing its job?

  "What about the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring? Was revolting against a dictator, which was against the laws, a 'just' action when the dictators had treated their populations with disdain?

  "According to Rawls, societies are typically characterized by conflicts of interests along with their common identity of interests. Because of the total lack of unanimity, society must have a constitution or some equally prevailing assignment of rights and duties so that it can function effectively. Rawls wrote that these are the principles of distributive or social justice. They would specify the type of government to be established and the principles of the government. No society can function effectively unless there is an agreement on certain basic principles. You see in your own American society that the Republicans want to cut spending but not increase taxes while the Democrats are quite willing to increase taxes for programs that they deem desirable. But then what the Democrats and Republicans think are desirable are often at odds. Your Democrats tend to look at your society as being made up of people who are equals and deserving of somewhat equal treatment. The Republicans tend to see your society is made up of unequal people, with those at the top often being given incentives to allow them to achieve even higher, while those on the bottom are not very important, except for when they break the law and must be imprisoned. Contrast these quite different approaches to American society with the much more equalitarian ideas of Scandinavian countries, or even the European Union states."

 — "I remember that Rawls said that if a society is to work effectively its members must be rational in determining exactly what they want in a just society. And above all, it must be fair. Of course what is fair is what we are going to discuss today."

 —"But as Kelsi just said, look at our American society. The reason we are going backward is that the major factions, the so-called liberals and conservatives, are primarily concerned with stopping the other's programs and proposals. It is more important to be elected and in power than to advance the society. When President Bush decided to attack Iraq and sink the country into debt by another $1 to $3 trillion, it wasn't rationally decided upon. Inspectors had found no weapons of mass distraction. But Bush said they were there. It was not rational. And in terms of what it did to the society, especially increasing the national debt, it was certainly not fair."

  —"Let's get back to Rawls. He wanted us to be completely oblivious to our own circumstances and to make principles of justice that were totally societally based. What I objected to was his fundamental of equality as being basic to justice. It seems that equality has crept silently into our democratic tent and nearly completely killed off the idea of liberty which is fundamental in our modern constitutions. Any political philosopher knows that to the degree that you have the equality, particularly economic equality, you reduce liberty. If people are free to succeed economically but must be held back by being taxed to take care of the people at the bottom of society, liberty is reduced as the equality of results is increased."

  -"We are getting a little ahead of ourselves. Rawls, like the Enlightenment philosophers Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, wants to start from an imaginary starting line. For the Enlightenment philosophers, they called it 'the state of nature.' Rawls, called it 'a veil of ignorance.' The point was that each of these thinkers thought that we must start our ethical and political thinking anew. If from behind a veil of ignorance we were to deliberate on what principles of justice we would adopt, we would be in what Rawls calls the original position. Hopefully from this starting point we might be able to develop principles of justice that are of a more universal form then just basing our idea of justice on our selfish needs. We could then, hopefully, arrive at a social contract. This is really just a refined and redefined approach taken by Locke and Rousseau. Rawls' two principles of justice are: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others; and that social and economic inequalities are allowed only to the extent that they benefit those who are worst-off."

 —"I understand the first principle, but not the second."

 —"He meant that perhaps if more productive people are rewarded with more wealth, then the society as a whole will be richer, so much so that even the relatively poor will be better off. For example, it may be to most people's benefit if physicians and teachers are paid more than carpenters. And it was his idea that all social goods such as liberty, opportunity and income are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to everyone's advantage."

 \--"When we talk about distributive justice, we can distribute things according to need, as it seems that Rawls does, or we can distribute according to whether you deserve it because you earned it. Rawls obviously takes the equalitarian path, assuming that everyone is equal no matter how hard they have worked."

 —"Men, I can't answer all of your questions and objections in a sentence or two. The basics of ethics and the political theory are much more involved. Most people argue at the surface level. I think you would agree that we must go back to the basics, even the basic assumptions. That is what I plan to do in a few moments.

"When we go back to basics we will discuss whether or not people are really equal. In our democratic societies we have generally learned that they are. But are they really? If they are not, then pure liberty, including economic liberty, should be allowed. On the other hand if they are actually equal, should that equality be limited to equal rights or should it include the fulfillment of their equal needs, or even their perceived needs?

"Rawls' basic assumption in his idea of justice is that people are equal. He doesn't go back to the basics to explain why. Most people who have been brought up in today's democratic societies assume that people are somehow equal. Nobody goes on to explain why. That is one of the things that I want to do in our discussion. As you will see, a belief in equality or inequality can be arrived at through either theistic or non-theistic basic assumptions. It has been my experience that people don't like to go back to the basics. They prefer to start arguing from their opinions rather than push their thinking back to its possible foundations. As you probably understand, having an important thought is difficult enough in itself-- but deeply understanding one's beliefs is often a very painful process. It is so difficult to reevaluate what your mother told you!

"Rawls, like so many ethicists, wants to nullify 'the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstances as counters in a quest for political and economic advantage.' I would certainly agree with him about people being born into unequal social circumstances. That's why we here in The Colonies have an extremely limited inheritance potential. I'm sure that Tyler told you about that."

 —"Right. The maximum that any of your people can inherit is about $100,000. So everyone has to start reasonably equally. And of course your education system allows people to gain as much education as possible. So that pretty much takes care of people living a rich and expensive lifestyle because their parents or grandparents earned a lot of money. (41) But you don't take care of those who don't have great natural abilities."

 —"Well, people without great natural abilities may still have the attitude to work hard. And you remember what Thomas Edison said-- that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. As we move through" our discussions, see what you think in terms of a real physical or spiritual equality among people.

"Rawls of course develops his theories based on what he thinks rational people would do if they were to develop principles for society when people don't start life equally. A major question is how would they think after their society had lasted a year or so and the more intellectually or physically endowed, or the hardest workers, became disenchanted with sharing the wealth that they had worked hard to achieve."

 —"Do we apply this to the whole world? Certainly a girl born to a subsistence farmer in a small village in India, a boy born in a favela in Rio or a child born in Watts don't start equally with a child born in west Oslo, a child born in Virginia Beach or a child born into the House of Windsor. This being true, what principles would you think are necessary for an ideal society? And are we looking a justice in each country or are we looking for justice for all the people of the world?

"At this point in time it is obviously local and national. Just look at the recent revolutions in the Mideast. On the other hand, the richer countries do a number of things to bring liberty or equality to poorer nations."

 —"But they are having children so fast that they thwart their own progress. Oops! I'm on my soap box again."

 —"You are right Wreck, but let us come back to specific issues like licensing parents, right now I want to explore the deeper meta-ethical layers of our thinking. Then we can apply the fundamental principles to some specific problems of justice.

"As we continually see, from terrorist bombings and revolutions, people are ready to die for ideas that they have not even considered to think through. Your mother, your religious leader, your teacher, a radio or television personality can express an idea with forcefulness but without resorting to an analysis of how that belief came into being. But let's move on to Rawls' second principle.

"His second principle had two parts. First everyone should have equality of opportunity to achieve social positions in a society. This is, of course, a principle of liberty, of equality of opportunity at the beginning of the race—a race within society for status and financial compensation. But the second part of this principle is quite different, He said that structural inequalities, such as wealth and prestige, that result from people having an equal opportunity to achieve, are 'just' only if they work to the advantage of all. For example if an IT guru, like Steve Jobs, is highly paid, the whole society may gain from his expertise—even though they may not benefit equally. This he called the 'difference' principle. There may be differences but they improve life for all. But if these unequal differences do not benefit society generally, they are not 'just.'. (42)

INEQUALITY

"Let's look at inequality for a minute. As much as you modern democrats may not like it, inequality is a fact. Whether we look at the intellectual or moral behavior of people or at our physical bodies or potentials, like--athletic ability, height or weight, industriousness—we are not the same, not equal.

"With this in mind, what skills or traits are most important in determining our inequalities? For some people it is how close they are to eternal salvation. For others it may be their contributions to society. For others it may be how well one has taken care of oneself—financially, physically, or in achieving in some area.

"But we don't think that natural inequalities, such as intelligence, have to be equalized in some other way. Liberals, socialists and communists tend to want to level us--particularly in terms of economics-- but also socially.

"When we are allowed the liberty to achieve, people come out unequally in every way. This is especially true economically. We see this today throughout the world-- that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Those who are very rich or talented are people who have often achieved in the business world, and often in the political world. Political success in today's 'democratic" world requires a great deal of financing to be elected to an important office."

 —" Forget finances! We are all human—aren't we therefore equal?".

 -"What does that mean? Do we have some sort of special substance that makes us equal? For example, do we all have a soul?"

 .--"Well, I'm an atheist so I don't believe in that soul garbage. But we all have the same number of chromosomes."

 -"Most of us have 46 chromosomes but some of us have 47 or even 48 and some have 45. But if we look at the 46 level, hares also have 46 chromosomes. So are we equal to hares"

 .--"We all have human parents, maybe that is the key."

 -"Do you think that humanness should be related to something other than common human parents or chromosomes or genes?" Do you think that Leonardo da Vinci, Aristotle or Thomas Jefferson were equal to Hitler, Genghis Khan and Stalin?

"Just what criteria do you plan to use for humanness?--Height and weight, chromosomes and genes, a certain level of intelligence? Or would you use other criteria such as: social or political contributions to society, technological contributions such as Edison and Gates have given us? Or might it be the truly human accomplishments such as Nietzsche, Carlisle or Maslow have suggested?

"Non-thinking people like to say we are all human, but they don't define what they mean by human? It's like so many other words that have a myriad of meetings like: democracy, socialism, liberty, equality, values, morality and other such commonly mentioned but impossible to agree on terms."

EQUALITY FROM GOD

 -"I definitely agree with you about not thinking through our beliefs.. But so far you have only been considering the physical evidence. There is the evidence from the supernatural. Let me explain, with the help of some of my Catholic cohorts, why we are all equal.

"Jacques Maritain, an eminent Catholic philosopher, described our modern Catholic approach to equality thusly: 'Christianity confirms and emphasizes the concrete sense of equality in nature by affirming its historic and genealogical character, and by teaching that here we are concerned with a blood relationship, properly so-called, all men being descended from the same original parents, and being brothers in Adam before they were brothers in Christ. Heirs of the same weaknesses, but heirs also of the same original greatness, all created in the image of God and all called to the same supernatural dignity as adopted sons of God, and to the coheirship would Christ the Savior, already redeemed by the same life-giving Blood, and thus destined to become equals to the Angels in heaven (43) . . The unity of mankind is at the basis of Christianity.' (44) Maritain has summarized the ideas of those Christian thinkers who have held that there is a basic equality of Christians in that they share in the image of God as the source of their lives.

Pope Pius X was a bit more succinct, yet more comprehensive in terms of looking at equality in terms of our equal destinies. 'The equality of the different members of society consists only in this, that all men derive their origin from God the Creator, that they have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, and they must be judged, rewarded or punished by God, according to the exact measure of their merits or demerits.' (45)

The most influential theologian in the Catholic Church was Thomas Aquinas. He was greatly influenced by Aristotle, and of course the Bible. Much of his work was in 'Christianizing' Aristotle. As with most Judeo-Christian equalitarians, he emphasized Genesis 1:26, 27. God created man and woman in His Image. Naturally since God is infinite, so is his likeness in humans. This also sets man apart from animals, who were not created in the Image of God. (46) He then went on to say that it is man's intellectual nature that makes him most like God. (47)"

 .—"I agree that Aquinas was a smart fella, but with the millions of contradictory ideas that people hold, especially killing each other because they don't believe the same things, I can't buy the idea that we all share in God's mind."

 —"That is because people, as God, have free will. That is part of the infinite nature of the soul. But let me go on. It is the soul that separates humans from animals. (48) Similarly it is the physical body that separates humans from angels. (49) So there is an equality based on our creation by God, but there is also an equality in how we should live our lives for God and an equality where we are equally responsible for living the good life and where we will be equally judged."

 —"Father Ray, are you familiar with the work of the Protestant theologian Emil Brunner?"

 —"Sorry, but I never heard of him."

 —"He was writing in the 20th Century. He saw the Christian view of equality as being between the Greek view of inequality and the modern view of equality being 'self-evident.' (50) He wrote that since you can't prove that humans are equal or unequal, you must accept their equality on faith. (51) He repeated the idea of many before him that in Genesis it is written that we are all made in the Image of God. (52)

 .—"Here we go with 'faith' again. These damn religious guys keep saying that whenever they can't prove something because it is either unprovable or absurd we must believe it on faith."

 —"Don't you accept things like global warming on faith?"

 .—"No. I accept it because over a thousand temperature measuring stations are showing increased temperatures over the last 50 to 100 years. That's evidence, solid evidence."

 —"Be that as it may, Brunner also followed the thinking of Aquinas seeing a common destiny of humans, that is that all humans are responsible to God. (53) All humans, even non-Christians must respond to God. (54) But he goes beyond Aquinas in seeing that God has commanded us equally to love Him and our neighbors, so whatever our physical inequalities, we have equal responsibilities to God and to other humans. (55) We must realize that humans are not only rational animals, but they are also responsible to God." (56)

NON-GOD BASED EQUALITY

 —"But there have been many non-religious advocates of equality. The Stoics, for example, based their idea of equality on the idea that all humans can reason. (56)

"When you are on the bottom of society it is natural that you see the people above you as being there unjustly. This is the stuff of which revolutions are made. In the early 17th century a large number of people called the Levellers wanted equality to be established for all men.

"Philosophers as well as the common man looked for ways to base equality on other than God and soul. Some of these, however, were actually believers in a supernatural. Thomas Hobbes saw that people are equal because we can all kill any other man through strength or stealth. He also saw that humans have speech which allows for an understanding that sets them apart from animals. (57)

"John Locke, as Hobbes, was a 17th Century writer and a Christian but his reason for people being equal was not based on creation or soul. He believed that equality was self evident and was found in the 'state of nature' which is, of course, fictional. However his psychological theory that when we are born our minds are blank slates, tabula rasa as he said, gives us an intellectual equality at birth. Of course with today's science we know that his theory is false.

"Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote in the 18th Century. He was also a Christian but he wrote about his beliefs in equality non-theistically. Like so many of his Enlightenment peers he saw an equality in the ' state of nature.' But for Rousseau the state of nature was peaceful, opposed to the violent state of nature that Hobbes envisioned. (58) His state of nature was hypothetical, not historical. He relies on his state of nature idea in proposing a political equality of rights in his Social Contract. (59)

"He also saw humans as being' 'most advantageously organized' (60), having free will (61) And he states that 'men are born free and equal.' (62). He also states that while there are some inequalities in the state of nature they are not nearly as great as they are in society. (63) I might note that although Rousseau did not advocate economic equality he did think that the distribution of wealth in his day was not just. (64)

Immanuel Kant was a contemporary of Rousseau but the found the roots of equality in quite different realms. He found equality in his belief in the freedom and the autonomy of the will. Our equality is to a large degree based on our differences from the animals. Any inequalities that humans have is based on their levels of moral conduct. (65) For Kant it was motive of a person in his or her ethical actions that was critical. (66) As opposed to animals, humans have the ability to be rational.

Every rational nature is an 'end in itself.' " (67)

 \--"But if Kant saw us as equal because of our rational natures but our reasoning abilities vary, how can we be equal?"

 -"I assume that he saw us as nearly equal."

- -"It is strange that two the most influential theorists of the 19th century, Jeremy Bentham with his utilitarianism and Karl Marx's with his communism did not develop a theory on why we are equal. They merely assumed an equality of all people which then required that their equality of needs be met. Bentham assumed the major ethical principle to be 'the greatest good for the greatest number.' Karl Marx held that our government should insist on 'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.' This assumption of equality, particularly an equality of needs, has developed in the West and is seldom questioned even though it is unprovable and can only be theorized from a religious point of view that has as its basis an idea of equal souls in our unequal bodies.

"But while the idea that all humans are equal and the state should somehow provide for that equality, the realities of economics and social awareness continue to stretch the distance between the 'haves' and the 'have nots.' –the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer at a rate not seen since the 18th Century revolutions."

 —"There are a couple of additions or criticisms that might be leveled against the theories of Bentham and Marx. John Stuart Mill in the 19th century was a utilitarian but he differed from Bentham in saying that there we different qualities of pleasure or happiness. He might have said that listening to Bach was a higher quality of pleasure than listening to Bieber or reading Milton was a higher level pleasure than reading Agatha Christie.

"And for Marx, his longtime collaborator and patron Friederich Engels wrote that 'Equality . . . is anything but an eternal truth' (68) He wrote that 'The idea that all men, as men, have something in common, and they are therefore equal so far as these common characteristics go, is of course primeval.' (69) But then he followed that statement with 'But the modern demand for equality is something entirely different from that, this consists rather in deducing from those common characteristics all humanity, from that equality of men as men, a claim to equal political and social status for all human beings, or at least for all citizens of a state or members of a society.' (70)

 —"Good points, Those earlier attempt to find equality where it was not failed. But they nourished the revolutionary calls for equality against despotic kings that the common people had accepted. Then the powerful appeal for equality with patricians and priests evolved from the vision of eliminating the privileges of certain classes to the ideal of equal needs for individuals in a society and the duty of the society to cater to both the needs and the demands of all. The poor and the imprisoned claimed rights to be taken care of--even if they were not economically or socially productive.

"My favorite philosopher in this area is John Dewey. I call him America's philosopher because he clarified your American pragmatic approach to life, your approach to democracy, and he clarified the scientific method. He was definitely the heavyweight in analyzing the evolution of your democratic thinking and in making the scientific method essential both in academia and in people's personal lives, and as a philosopher and psychologist of education he was your most influential educator.

"He viewed equality of sorts to be an ideal. But ideals are real, he wrote, because they have the power to incite people into action. (71) This was true of the ideal of democracy leading people to establish governments based on popular suffrage. (72)

"It may seem strange that a philosopher of science would see ideals and faith as essential in a belief in equality relative to the democratic moral. But as a pragmatist he was firmly behind whatever worked. He saw equality springing from the unique individuality of every person. It was the individuality, not a comparison of talents, that made it necessary to treat people as equals in a democratic society. (73) He believed that democratic equality is moral, not physical or psychological.

"Thomas Vernor Smith echoed many of Dewey's ideas. Both he and Dewey found equality to be based on function, not on essence—as had the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Smith held that equality should be based on its fruits rather than its roots. (74) If the action stirred by the ideal is good, then the ideal is good. (75) So while people are not actually equal, it is a functionally useful concept. (76)

"Both Smith and Dewey emphasized the need for equality of opportunity, particularly in education. This equal opportunity requirement is essential for liberty. (77)

"When we look at inequality from a Biblical point of view or from early Fathers of the Church we find that from the earliest days inequality was sanctioned in terms of women being inferior to men and slaves being inferior to their masters. There has long been a question about whether or not a 3rd century church council had debated about whether women even had souls. There were certainly some early churchmen who debated it.

"St. Paul, in sending a slave home to his Christian owner (78) may have been a result of his Greek background in which slaves were commonly held. But it conflicts with the law of Moses as shown in Deuteronomy 23:15–16 which says 'thou shall not deliver unto his master a servant which is escaped from his master into thee.' Still when Paul, or more likely a writer using Paul's name, wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians he mentioned both free men and slaves without criticizing slavery. (79)

"Christian approaches to equality for women has a long and negative history. We still see this in the Catholic Church's opposition to women priests. This goes back to a number of early church writings, particularly by the so-called Fathers of the Church. Tertullian, for example, felt that women were the root of evil. "The curse God pronounced on your sex still weighs on the world....You are the devil's gateway.... You are the first that deserted the divine laws. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because you deserved death, it was the son of God who had to die". (80) St. Jerome, the compiler of the Vulgate, the first Latin Bible wrote that 'Women are the root of all evil.' (81) St. Augustine was particularly negative towards women and blamed Eve entirely for the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

"One question is whether God gave us unequal souls or our souls became unequal due to our unequal bodies or due to our ineffective uses of our free will—a function of the mind and soul. Peter Lombard, Duns Scotus and St. Bonaventure are among those who held that our souls are unequal. (82) Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in believing that our unequal bodies sculpted our souls into unequal entities. This was also the belief of St. Albert the Great, the teacher of Aquinas, and of Suarez.

"Aquinas did not believe that we are souls merely using bodies, as St. Augustine following Plato, believed. The soul, not having the greater intelligence of God or the angels, needs a body to be its vehicle of sensation. (83) The souls are not equal. (84) In the chapter 'Whether the Inequality of Things Is from God' (85) he states that the universe would not be complete unless there were diversity. Inequality of talents and other factors are therefore planned by God. 'Therefore, as the Divine Wisdom is the cause of the distinction of beings for the sake of the perfection of the universe, so is it the cause of inequality.' (86)

"'The inequality of souls is 'substantial', that is, it lasts after death and for eternity.

"Our friend Emil Brunner, also saw an inequality of souls, but it was not 'substantial,' Every person is unique and is a separate creation by God. It is this unique creation of soul, not the inequality of matter as Aristotle and Aquinas held, that was primary. (87) Society can exist only when there are individuals of different talents and potentials. (88) Our obvious inequalities are essential because they were created by God. But 'all differences and therefore all individuality become irrelevant.'" (89)

 .—"These theologians sure have trouble agreeing on their invisible and unprovable subjects. Much harder than finding a needle in a haystack!"

 —"That's why here in The Colonies few people put stock in any of the religions of Abraham. But since so many people in the world do believe in those religions, I think it is important for you to understand some theological ideas if you are interested in looking deeply into a realistic theory of justice."

 —"What about ideas of justice in Islam?"

 -"Slavery was certainly acceptable, as was polygamy. I'm sure you know that most slaves brought to the New World were captured by Muslims. The Qu'ran at verse 33:50 states that 'Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.' This verse clearly shows that Muslims believe that taking slaves in war was a God-given right. These slaves were considered 'booty' or the spoils of war. As the saying goes: to the victors go the spoils. (90) But a slave girl, while always sexually available to her master, should not be forced into prostitution. (91). The master may even marry one." (92)
 —"It makes me wonder why so many African Americans have converted to Islam. They apparently blame Christian slave owners in the New World, but don't blame the Muslims who caught and sold the slaves, and they don't blame present day Muslim countries, like Mauritania or Mali, where slavery is rampant."

 —"I've often wondered about that myself. I also understand that there are more slaves today than there were in the 18th and 19th centuries.

 —"Most of today's slavery is in Muslim African countries, but Muslim Indonesia, Hindu India and Catholic Dominican Republic all use slaves according to Anti-Slavery International.

"We have looked at equality from God-based views and non-God based views, and inequality from a God based view. The remaining option is inequality from a non-God based point of view. It is actually obvious that people are not equal, that is they are not exactly the same. Frederick Nietzsche has one of the most complete theories of inequality and the justice that should be developed from it. He criticized Rousseau for his idea that in the state of nature there was an equality of people. Nietzsche said 'I too speak of a return to nature, although it is really not a going back but a going up — an ascent to the high, free, even terrible nature and naturalness where great tasks are something one plays with, one may play with.' (93) Nietzsche often criticized that tendency in man to create the world as man desired it to be––to apply human values to nature rather than to take the actual tendencies of nature and give them value for mankind."

 \--"Very well put. I hadn't thought of it that way but there is something to be said for how our values should be developed. Like everything else we have talked of in our journeys, we need to go back to the basics. But if we go back to the obvious inequalities of humans, then develop our political systems based on those, we will certainly have some sort of leadership that is not democratic."

 —"I would think that you would not want a traditional monarchy based on 'nobility of birth.' We would not want a dictatorship of a person simply because he was physically strong. But I can see that the ideas of Plato's Republic, where talents and education boosted people up the leadership ladder might be a possibility."

 -"That might well be a solution. Although Nietzsche might acquiesce to a warrior like Napoleon, Genghis Khan or Caesar. It would really not make much of a difference because we are all in the 'herd' as Nietzsche said. So how we are governed is not at all important. We are there to be manipulated as the Overmen would decide.

"Nietzsche often wrote that 'men are not equal, and neither shall they become so.' (94) the call for equality is the goal of the masses––the weak, the sick, the mediocre. (95) Nietzsche was both anti-Christian and antidemocratic because both of these theories gave reasons for the herd to call for an outcome that was not in accordance with the laws of nature. Because we are animals we see ourselves as equals but Nietzsche saw man as something to be surpassed. We see occasionally the person who has achieved in a truly human area, such as art or philosophy. But we are continually countered by the religions of the West which fight the natural superiority of some people. It is good that God is dead for the monotheistic myth has held back those who were truly human. (96)

GREAT MAN THEORY

 \- "Let's look at another approach to liberty. What is called 'the great man theory', was developed in the mid-19th century by the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle. (97) Certain people become great because of their charisma, wisdom, intelligence, artistic ability, or ability to manipulate people. These are the people we read about in history, people who have influenced civilization. We don't remember a 15th-century a weaver of cloth from Venice, but we remember a great painter from Florence. We don't remember an Irish laborer in New Jersey at the turn of the 20th century, but we remember Thomas Edison. The truth is that only a handful of us will be remembered in the 22nd century. Most of us are superfluous to the development of civilization."

 \--"In fact, the huge majority of us are detrimental to the development of civilization. We clog the skies with carbon, we spend our money on incarcerating the bad guys instead of on university educations for the good guys. And we gobble up irreplaceable resources while we spew our wastes across the land and sea."

 —"A point well taken. Does that mean that we should take away liberties of many of our planetary brothers and give the liberty only to those who are trying to save the earth?

"On the other hand, Herbert Spencer criticized Carlisle's idea saying that it was the societies that made possible the actions of the great people. Without the social actions that had gone before, the revolutionaries and very special people would not have been able to do what they did."

 —"I wonder about that. How many Napoleons did the French produce in the 19th century? How many Jeffersons did America produce in the 18th century?"

 —"Right, but look at the Florentine society of the 15th century and how many geniuses it produced. Of course we are not talking about one in ten, or one in a 100, or even one in a 1000. Clearly you need both mentally and emotionally endowed people in a society that can nurture them. When I look at your country and see how it has fallen dramatically in the ranks of education, I wonder how many potential geniuses have fallen through the rungs of the upward reaching ladder.

"On the other hand, in China I see a society bent on educating its young to achieve. But perhaps they are training too many engineers and not educating enough people in the liberal arts who can think the big thoughts, the thoughts that can sway civilizations––like Confucius or Lao Tze.

"We may marvel at the creations of some architects and engineers. They gave us the Taj Mahal, the Golden Gate Bridge, television and the Internet. But they have not moved people to action like a Gandhi or King. They have not moved our intellects like a Plato or Freud have done. Education must be more than vocational. It must light our intellectual fires and allow us to think big thoughts. If civilization is to advance we must go beyond the rat mazes of Skinner. Some of us rats must climb the walls and see the whole picture. We must learn to understand the 'whys' of our beliefs then move forward and upward toward greater visions for humanity."

 —"I agree but where will these 'greater visions' lead us? Look at two of the most influential men of the West. Would we consider Jesus or Mohammed as great men when we see the prejudice, the hatred, and the wars that their followers have perpetrated. How do we determine who were great men? Is it their intentions or the results of those intentions as they have played out in the feeble minds of their followers? Was Hitler great because he slowed the rate of population growth in the world, or was he a fiend who fed the flames of hate and built prejudicial pillars that are too often necessary for the inferiors among us to ascend to raise themselves in their own eyes—oblivious to the needs of humanity.

  " I don't have an answer for you, Lee, but I think most people would look to the positive accomplishments of people to evaluate whether or not they would judge them to be great. Since are talking about liberty for the superior people I suppose we should talk a bit about Nietzsche and his idea of the 'overman.' As you probably remember from your philosophy classes, Nietzsche felt that we should overcome ourselves. He talked about a 'will to power' that all people have and that some seem to come closer to achieving the truly human values—values that only a few people have exhibited to some degree."

 —" I remember that Chuck Chan talked about Alfred Adler and his belief that the drive for power was our major motivator." (98)

 —"There is some similarity, but Adler was looking at the general motivation to escape our lingering childhood feelings of inferiority, while Nietzsche took it to a higher philosophical plane. His 'overman' or 'superman' didn't just become mentally healthy, he achieved the level of meta-need satisfaction that Maslow had suggested. In fact he went further than that. Because while Maslow found that some people have achieved such a high level, Nietzsche said that no one had yet achieved this very high level. I suppose that such a person would be part genius, part creator and part saint. Nietzsche wrote that: '...the goal of humanity lies in its highest specimens'."

 —"It seems that you have taken political theory into a meta-ethical level. Shouldn't we just stay at the level of justice?"

 —"I understand your concern, but ethics are the overriding principles of political theory and of constitutional laws.

"Nietzsche's observation was that everyone is trying to force their wills on other people. Whether by giving people gifts, telling them that you love them, or often by threatening them. He believed that there were no altruistic actions. We all live according to our basic instincts. Suffering is normal. He finishes his book 'The Will to Power' with these lines '. . . --do you want a name for this world? A solution for all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?--This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!'

"He wrote that societies show this even more than individuals. The reason for a society is to give its citizens power in terms of their individual economies, their pride in their nation and a collective feeling of satisfied individual wills to power. You can certainly understand that particularly dictators and kings will buy into this basis for justice. People who are trying to get ahead, such as students cheating or politicians lying, can also be seen to be in this level of justice. In fact Nietzsche preferred that the will to power be in the individual person. Sympathy should not be a factor. In section 7 of The Antichrist,' he says that 'pity asks for the multiplication of suffering.' So what is ethical or just does not really concern the actions or feelings of others. The individual is the major player. The individual is godlike and wants to see all mankind at his or her feet.

"The Judeo-Christian moral ideas, which have been extended into the democratic and socialistic ideas of society, generally prevent a person from acting effectively from his or her own will to power. They thwart his instinctual needs and drives."

 —"As I remember, Nietzsche thought that violence was the most direct way to get one's way but that the 'herd', as he called those of us in the general society, had learned that violence was evil so we individuals are likely to use other techniques to gain mastery over others. We went into that in considerable detail on techniques to control people with Dr. Singh (99) in Indus. He called all attempts to manipulate people or groups 'politics'. He gave many examples in the individual and group areas, but he was quite clear that it was achieving power in the state that was usually the major goal."

 —"I'm beginning to see how our adventures are tying things together, the values we talked about in Kino (100), the psychological drives we talked about in Singaling (Book 6) and the political techniques that were talked about in Indus. I had never thought about pulling all these ideas together, in fact I hadn't been exposed to many of these ideas before this trip."

 —"Con, we are all ignorant about different things. There is just so much information in the world today that no one can know even a small part of it. But I think we can learn a bit about the basics behind the 'whys' of what we do. Not enough people go back to the basics in their thinking. We tend to listen to our parents when we are very young, our teachers and priests as we get older, our friends as we move through adulthood, and sometimes our books that may force us to think a bit deeper into our ethical, political and economic ideas. And for most of us, what little we know becomes our total truth—and for many of us that small grain of belief gives us reason to use any of the means of politics, from theology to terrorism, to coerce the world into accepting our infinitesimal speck of faith.

"But back to justice from an individual's point of view. Nietzsche says that women use love, by which he meant sex and subservience, to control men. Both men and women may be kept in order or used by a call to duty. You can also use shame and guilt as a way of maneuvering people. Nietzsche said that the Jews have used this technique since Roman times to control their oppressors and to feel superior to them. (101) In fact all, or nearly all, human actions are designed to bring us upward socially and politically—satisfying our will to power.

"As we mentioned, in many of his ideas Nietzsche was preceded by Thomas Carlyle in his 1840 lectures. Carlyle's basic tenet, "That great men should rule and that others should revere them," is supported by a faith in history and progress through social evolution. Great people contribute to the progress of society. When there are no great people society tends to stagnate or degenerate. The idea of democracy gives power to the uneducated, unintelligent and easily manipulated rabble or, as Nietzsche called us, the herd. The real heroes know they have the right to rule and use their courage and their pride to do it, while we in the herd are shackled by the Christian virtues of compassion, humility and meekness.

"As Nietzsche said, with the death of God people merely continued the morality that religions had taught them. Karl Marx did this with his emphasis on equality. If God is really dead, nature shows us that the apex of morality is the triumph of the fittest--of the truly human beings. Humanity is not about leveling the herd--but about developing the thoroughbreds, the best of the breed, the champions. Humans have not yet reached their potentials, the Superman of Nietzsche is still in the future.

"With the death of God there is nothing left but for the individual to seek self mastery then to master others as a show that evolution is continuing. Greatness in life is the value we should achieve. We see Nietzsche's ideas used by tyrants, or would-be tyrants. Hitler and Stalin are examples of tyrants who used any method to get across their ideas. Conversely, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, used murder as a way of gaining attention for his religious and anti-immigrant ideas. In each case human life was insignificant to the fulfillment of their cause.

"So as a basis of justice, the idea of equality can certainly be questioned. If we are actually equal, it would seem that every form of political equality should be legal--from the right to vote to a Marxian equality of income. But if we are not equal, and assuming we have the nearly universally desired ' equality of opportunity' which as I have mentioned is as much of a requirement for a government in which liberty is essential to one in which equality is essential. But equality of opportunity will spread the population unequally as those with talents or industriousness separate the people in an almost infinite parade.

PRINCIPLES OF LIBERTY

"If we are trying to set up a society where people can achieve to their highest level there must be some equal rights. As we have moved from monarchies to democracies we have tried to reduce hereditary privilege to some degree. Here in The Colonies we have done it more than most countries. The Soviet Union did it to some degree. But in most countries the selfishness of parents for their children and the lobbying power of the rich keeps the pampered progeny of the prosperous inheriting the riches of their DNA donors. British titles and castles, as well as American fortunes are the relics of the absurdity of tradition. Multimillionaire status generally starts with those who were born lucky and rich-- many financial leagues ahead of the rest of us in the pack. As you know, here in The Colonies no person can inherit more than a total of $100,000."

 —"I can't understand how parents could ever vote in such a law."

 —"You remember how Wanda Wang talked about the strength of our self-centered morality (102), particularly people being concerned more with the present than the future. And Chuck Chan talked about the drive for power and how money is an easy way to measure power in many societies." (103)

 —"And Dr. Singh talked about ways people can be manipulated, such as through money or an appeal to honor. What you people here in The Colonies have done is to appeal to people's selfishness by having very low taxes, just 1 or 2% and appealing to their honor in terms of having a much more even starting line for the country's youth. Keeping the national goal of a realistic equality of opportunity as the most 'just' approach and the fact that true equality of opportunity makes for a more effective and productive economy. Your approach is beginning to make a lot of sense to me."

 —"You have really nailed down the problems, men! And, I'm glad you see the advantages of our libertarian system. I'm sure we could find a place for you in our society, but we're not very religious so Ray, you might have to become a businessman!

"Now let's go back to Rawl's theory. His first principle was that everyone in the society should have the same rights. We should have an equal right to vote, equal justice before the law, and the freedom of conscience including freedom of religion and of political beliefs.

"Then he said that social and economic inequalities should somehow work to everyone's advantage and that positions and offices should be open to all. The part we don't buy is that the effects of inequality should benefit all. It often happens here in The Colonies, but it is not a national goal in our country.

"As we mentioned the Utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart thought that the most just society should you based on the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Mill, of course, thought that there were different qualities of happiness that should be considered. So a Mozart opera would be a preferable use of time than watching a football game and reading a classic novel like Ivanhoe would be a higher type of pleasure than reading a pulp novel.

"Socialists and Communists, such as Karl Marx, assume our equality so they have determined that we should be leveled economically to some degree.

"As the deeper thinkers realized, both in ethics and in determining principles of justice-- we must go back to first principles. Are we equal or unequal? Or should we assume an equality of some rights so that society can function reasonably well?

 —"We go back again to what Wanda Wang emphasized (104) at the base of most of all of our thinking we rest our ideas on basic assumptions that are non-provable. Since visiting with Wanda, this idea makes me more and more skeptical to the ideas that I hear being thrown out by people, especially politicians and media pundits who never tell people that their ideas are based on non-provable starting points or on non-provable definitions."

 —"It's my observation that none of them have the interest or the capacity to realize the fragile foundations of their opinions.

"So, Kelsi, what is the meta-ethical presumption for justice--nature or ideal? Survival of the fittest or utopia? Dog eat dog or social welfare?"

 —"Rawls sees cooperation as essential. We here in The Colonies see nature as essential. The Scandinavian countries see a socialistic ideal as primary."

 —"Kelsi, our next visit is to Northland, so we'll get a picture of their socialistic approach to justice there."

 —"That's good. You will undoubtedly see a number of people milking the system. You won't find that here in The Colonies. Here you do or you die. We are definitely attuned to nature. And what is a better ideal for justice than reality?

"I can understand that the selfishness of people makes them want to take more than they give to a society. And I understand that commonly people don't think-- they only react. I remember seeing some of your Tea Party members being interviewed on television. They were very much against socialism, but when asked to define it they couldn't do it. They didn't have a conception of what it was other than that it was evil. I recently saw some results of a survey by the Pew Research Center (105) where you Americans registered 60% against socialism and only 31% for it. But 75% of Americans want to keep their Social Security, and Social Security lies between socialism and communism---giving to people according to their needs. In most cases the recipients of Social Security and Medicare have put much less money into the system than they take out.

NEGATIVE OR UNIMPEDED LIBERTY—THE FREEDOM FROM EXTERNAL RESTRAINT

"I have started with the most 'far out' concept of liberty related to ethics and justice. Now let us go to the two more common meanings of liberty. While Nietzsche's ideas applied to the superior beings, these ideas apply to all. One is negative liberty, which means that you don't have laws or traditions holding you back. The other is positive liberty, which means that you have the freedom to accomplish certain things. These basic ideas came from Isaiah Berlin (106) but I will add some of my own ideas along the way.

"The revolutions of the American colonies and in France were revolutions to gain such freedom from restraints. The Americans wanted a voice in their taxation and in other areas of their lives. When they threw the tea overboard in the Boston harbor, their idea was no taxation without representation. King George had taxed their tea beyond what they thought was fair. When a king can make all the rules and the people have no input, many thinking people looked at the Athenian democracy and felt that the ideas of people voting for what they wanted made sense. Doing the will of a monarch, even if he said he was appointed by God, did not set well with people who were often doubting a God. And even those who believed often felt that the creating God was not involved in the world. Deists like Jefferson and Robespierre were common among the revolutionary leaders who had been influenced by the writers of the Enlightenment period who advocated freedom from the political imprisonment of the masses by the kings and clergy. You remember that one of the first actions of the post-revolutionary French government was to confiscate the property of the Catholic Church and end its power to tax the people.

"So people wanted a voice, not a voice from the Vatican or Versailles—they wanted their own voice. They wanted to keep most of their wages. They wanted freedom from the negative forces that held them down. They wanted freedom to choose their legislators, freedom to believe as they chose-- freedom to 'be.'"

 —"There are so many restraints on our bodies and minds that people had to work to throw them off. When we are not free to move, to produce, to think and to act on our thinking, we want to remove those chains."

 —"Religion has been, and still is a binding chain imprisoning us and restraining our freedom. When we are told what to believe and how to act by someone who claims authority from a god, we are experiencing this major negative to our liberty. Is it true that the same god can tell us that homosexuality is a damning evil and that it is OK, or that abortions are acceptable or must be prevented in every case, or that killing innocent people with car bombs is both deplorable and essential. I can certainly see that the disciples of the gods have given their flocks beliefs that burden most and relieve others. So the hindrances to liberty not only come from the courts of kings but also from the priests in their pulpits."

 —"I've seen this same kind of restriction to liberty in parents controlling their adult children through generating feelings of guilt and a call to duty to repay the parents for all they have done for their child. I've seen bosses holding down employees whose competencies threatened their own status."

 —"Enough! You get the point. Those in power commonly eliminate the opportunities for others' liberty. When those in power run the state, the multitudes may revolt. It is this political liberty that we want to concern ourselves with. We are unfree if our body is restrained or our will is coerced.

"Negative liberty means no external encumbrances. It refers to a freedom from barriers and constraints that prevent us from enjoying what we might consider basic freedoms. We don't want to be constrained by artificial rules or disciplines that might interfere with all our basic freedoms. We don't want rules that would give others legal rights that we don't have. So we want equality before the law. So 'negative' means 'no' barriers outside of ourselves to inhibit us from being free. There is probably a better term than 'negative' to describe this situation. 'Unimpeded' is probably a better understood term. So there is an equal opportunity for people to enjoy certain liberties.

"So the idea of negative freedoms allows certain of our desires to be possible—freedom of speech, freedom to vote, freedom of religious beliefs but not necessarily freedom to practice our religious or social beliefs in any way we desire. It does not give a believer the right to handle rattlesnakes or drink poison to prove his religious sincerity or to withhold life-saving medicine from his children. It does also not require that a citizen use these liberties. He does not have to vote. He does not have to avail himself of state paid attorneys when he has been accused of committing a crime. He or she does not have to think to verify a belief.

"But it does not include freedom from every fancied burden. It does not give one the liberty to avoid taxes, the freedom to exceed the speed limit on the highway, freedom to act in a treasonous manner, and other actions that may be detrimental to the public good or the general will of the people. For the good of society, license to behave in any way that a person would like must be curtailed in many cases.

"On the positive side of freedom, societies may require school attendance and even provide opportunities for students to achieve in areas such as: academics, sports, speech and student government.

POSITIVE LIBERTY

"Positive liberty, on the other hand, is the possibility of doing something so that we can be the best that we can be—taking control of our own lives. It means using our freedom to the maximum. There may be an individual internal factor that may limit or expand our potentials. Being weak, handicapped by a physical problem like blindness, or being handicapped by a mental insufficiency or illness can affect our opportunity to achieve our highest potentials. Being female has generally been such a barrier. The American and French revolutions were designed to give the male citizens the freedoms from the bonds that the kings had used to control adults. The king was the law. He could tax without the citizens having a say in the methods of collection or the uses of the money collected. Men were not equal before the law, because the king was the law and he was above all others.

"But not all encumbrances come from the king. Religious rules can control us. There are a number of 'thou shalt nots' in every religion. The laws made by our representatives often impede our freedom because they may work for the greater good of society. We can't drive fast, park our cars in the middle of street, or smoke in restaurants. Of course these lacks of freedom are compensated for by greater freedoms and safety for others."

 .—"Fear is a restraint on our freedom. You can imagine the fear of Jews and potential heretics during the Inquisition. You can imagine the fear of a Jew in Germany during Hitler's time."

 —"We see more and more the techniques that Dr. Singh talked about as political techniques when we see how they are used to limit freedoms. (107) In fact they may limit all kinds of behavior."

 —"It was the 'negative' liberty that was the first type of freedom that political writers espoused. The writers of the Enlightenment were all subject to the caprice of the crown. And thinkers all want to be free to ponder, to discuss and to write. Their desires for self-determination fed the fires of those who were sufficiently downtrodden to be willing to die for a better life.

"The Enlightenment authors pushed for self-government. In his 'Spirit of the Laws' Montesquieu suggested the separation of powers into: legislative, executive and judicial replacing the traditional French separations of: the monarchy, aristocracy and the common people. He also called into question the traditional three estates of the French monarchy: the aristocracy, the clergy and the common people. John Locke and Rousseau spelled out social contract theories. David Hume developed theories of liberty and of the rule of law. Others in the 17th and 18th centuries added to the importance of freedom and self-determination for citizens."

 —"But democracy is not necessarily the only way that people can have individual freedom. If I live under a king and am free to think and do as I like, I am free. But I might live in a democracy and not be allowed to express a view that communism is good or that a para-militaristic group should take over the country. So it seems to me that the form of government is not necessarily a guarantee of negative freedom.

POSITIVE FREEDOM OR SELF-MOTIVATED LIBERTY

"And with positive freedom what can we do to allow for the development of our potentials? If I am blind my ability to see and paint a sunset is impaired. If I am mentally retarded, I may not be able to comprehend my potentialities. If my spinal cord is severed I may not have the ability to climb El Capitan."

 —"True , but once the negative socially imposed limits to our freedom are removed the amount of freedom and self-expression we actually achieve is determined by us. As has been said, this is often called positive liberty. It is really just expressing our physical and mental potentials that exist. Many would see it more as a psychological or psychosocial ability rather than an element of freedom. The freedom merely allows us to achieve, if we can.

"Society can help by providing educational experiences that can allow us to develop our best possible selves. Parents are probably most important in this area.

"While the freedom to vote was granted when the negative bonds of aristocracy were removed, unless we vote we do not make use of that freedom. But to make maximum use of that freedom we need to study the issues and the candidates so that our freedom is used to maximum efficiency."

 —"It seems to me that this positive idea of freedom isn't really a political idea but more of a necessary psychological, sociological and economic necessity. In fact we can see that it would require strong societal pushes to make most people strive to be the best they can be. I would think that it would require a high level of education as well as prodding from the government to get people to become their best selves, to be creative. It sounds like a good idea but I wonder if it is actually best for society. It might create much more diversity of opinion than we already have and possibly it could weaken our societal structures."

 —"You have hit on a major area of conflict in political philosophy. The old classical Enlightenment people were concerned with eliminating the negative chains to liberty. More of the modern writers, and I include here Rousseau and Karl Marx, wanted to go beyond eliminating the shackles of oppression and hoped for stimulation from the society to make its members better. This often requires more equality, especially equality of opportunity, at the beginning of one's life."

 —"We all have the power to go to heaven."

 .—"But how do we know there is a heaven?"

 —"Let's not get into that again! Let's stick with trying to understand what justice is."

 —"I would assume to that our habits can also impede our liberty. If we are addicted to tobacco, gambling, alcohol or other drugs, we can be enslaved by ourselves. They may not only encumber us in our personal decisions but may get us into trouble with the laws of society and possibly land us in prison—the ultimate restriction of our freedom. When a person is too drunk or drugged to vote, he forfeits his rights and duties as a citizen. If I have been lazy, I probably did not learn all that I could have learned in high school. I probably didn't go to a legitimate college. I therefore probably limited my ability to think and understand."

 —"You are both right. In attempting to distinguish between natural and social obstacles we shall inevitably come across gray areas. Economic circumstances, like a recession or being in a state of poverty, certainly limit people's ability to do certain things. But the critical factor is whether the obstacles are intentionally erected by a person or persons or whether they are accidental and incidental to one's physical, mental, intellectual and economic status. And It is probably impossible that everyone in a society or in the world can ever have total liberty and total equality of opportunity. A woman who must work to feed her six children will not have a great deal of time to write about her ideas for social liberty.

"Sometimes our limitations are brought on ourselves. Then we have only ourselves to blame. It is when the barriers are produced by those outside of ourselves that we are unfree. And of course we must recognize that certain laws or social customs may stand in the way of our behaving exactly the way we want because such behavior can endanger the liberty of others. So we have to also realize that liberty is not license. Anarchy is not the way to allow for real liberty."

 —"I can see an even deeper problem with not using our positive opportunities for liberty. If it is true, as Professor Toynbee wrote, that civilizations die from within it would seem that the Romans let their civilization slip through their fingers while those fingers were busy pouring more wine or grabbing the sexual delights during their orgies. I can see some of the same time killers in my country seeing video games and TV soap operas and sports add to the speed of the country's downfall as positive liberty is ignored by so many citizens and children. It's no wonder that the East is rising while the West is falling."

 —"I hope it's not as bad as you paint it Wreck, but I see your point. On the other hand, there are certainly times when others have reduced our chances to be free. I remember a student of mine who was confined to a wheelchair because someone had run over her. I remember another person, a football coach, who was crippled by an accident on the field. Court cases may give financial awards to attempt to minimize the damage, but money cannot bring back those bodies. Their freedom to act physically was permanently impaired. Of course their mental capacities were not reduced in those two cases."

 —"There are all kinds of limitations to freedom. A huge snowstorm may have blocked your door so you can't get out. An earthquake may have toppled your house so you have no place to live. A tsunami may have wiped out the place of your business, so you have no place to work. So, yes commander, there are lots of limitations to an individual's freedom. We must merely do what we can to remove artificial, especially human-made, laws and traditions that impair our freedom."

 .—"I sure see that with religions. I think the religions of the West are far worse in limiting people's freedoms to 'think and do' than are the religions of the East. But from what I saw yesterday in your country, religion is not much of a limiting factor since you have so few believers."

 —"Religion is not the only man-made obstacle to freedom, other tautologies can be at least as repressive. Think of the Communist ideologies of the USSR that suppressed both independent thinking and religious leanings. Nazi theories for the development of the master race and the elimination of Jews and gypsies was another recent obstacle. In your own country the McCarthy years certainly suppressed people who were either communists or had what the senator believed to be communist leanings. We see it over and over again because every person is certain that he or she is right—in many of these situations people are willing to enact laws or even kill others to make certain that their beliefs become everyone's beliefs."

 .—"We have certainly seen that in our country with the so-called 'pro-life' people killing doctors and enacting laws that disallow abortions for anyone at any time. How in the world can they rationalize that an adult human being with completed medical training is less valuable than an embryo that is only a few weeks from conception?"

 —"It is so disappointing to me that we cannot see that so often our beliefs are not only unprovable but also are often no better than other beliefs. Is being a devoted mother superior to or equal to being a devoted statesman? Is being a thinking Democrat as valuable as being a thinking Republican? It is not just recognizing that values are relative but that some quite different values can be equally probable.

"Peoples opinions, however unfounded and unexamined, are held in higher esteem than are many laws or traditions. Although often it is the tradition, or what the person thinks was the tradition, that develops the opinion. People who appear to have authority, such as ministers and popes, can sway public opinions more than can scientists with their facts and proven theories. What is customary replaces reason, and a strong faith in an unprovable idea commonly is acted upon in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. Legislators with no scientific education commonly pass laws that are contrary to the good of society because they have 'faith' in some non-provable idea."

 —"You know I am all for freedom, but to the degree that a society allows for nearly total freedom you get a nearly infinite number of opinions, each of which is held in very high regard by its proponents. With freedom of religion should we follow the evangelicals looking for a government by a Christian God? Should we follow Shari'ah law and develop a Muslim society? Should we follow the teachings of Joseph Smith? Should we follow L Ron Hubbard's Scientology? Each one thinks they have the final answer and in many cases the adherents are willing to fight to the death with guns or lawyers. More freedom certainly leads to more diversity, and each difference creates more people who may be counted on to riot or revolt."

 —"A question is whether you are free if you don't use your abilities that your freedom grants. For example if you have the right to vote and don't use it--are you free? You may be enchained by your own laziness or ignorance. If this is the case, should society work to require you to be free? In some societies people must pay a fine if they don't vote. Is this freedom? If you are to live in a democratic society do you have the responsibility to help to make it work?

"If liberty is to be lived, must society be responsible for removing all impediments to one's thinking and actions? If you have a very religious Christian or Muslim woman who wants to be subservient to her family and husband, should society educate her about all the possibilities that are available to her in an equalitarian relationship or in the world of business? Should it question the traditions and the family pressures that may have brought her to this subservient position? If you have a young man who wants to lose himself to heroin, does society have a responsibility to take away his dependence on drugs, to force him into a drug-free life, or to educate him to the point where he can achieve happiness in other areas than in a chemically induced state? If society does any of these, somebody else must pay taxes to make these state agencies possible. If the person wants to pay these taxes for this purpose, there is no problem. But if the person feels that she is losing the economic fruits of her efforts and wants to keep them, her freedom is being reduced."

 —"What I think you are saying here is that as long as one's desires are not developed through manipulation or indoctrination they are okay. I would agree with that."

 —"Oh , tell me that your Catholic Church doesn't continually manipulate and indoctrinate people both within and without your religion. Telling them that Jesus died to save them, that there is a heaven and hell, that the Pope knows everything and gets his word directly from God—if that isn't indoctrination then I don't know what is."

 —"When you know the truth, the truth shall set you free. So what better way to serve the cause of justice and liberty than to make people aware of their eternal lives?"

 —"You guys are going to have plenty of time to argue about religions when we get to Muchinju. So let's stick to the topics of justice and liberty for now."

 —"Good idea, commander.

 —"Kelsi, I have a hard time with that 'commander' appellation. As you know, my friends call me Wreck. You can probably guess that it refers to the shipwreck of my famous ancestor. I much prefer 'Wreck' to my given name 'Lemuel.'"

 —"Wreck it is. But back to our discussion. You can certainly see that the ideas of positive liberty can be at least somewhat related to the concept of equality of opportunity.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN LIBERTY AND EQUALITY

 —"The basic problem, as I have previously mentioned, is that total equality and total liberty conflict--particularly when we get into the economic realm. Both ideas, though quite noble, cannot be implemented to maximum degrees. So how is justice best served? Was Marxian communism more noble than laissez faire capitalism?

"In the area of criminal justice the two ideas also conflict but for somewhat different reasons. The idea of equality, being a more recent national goal, seems to have hooked up with modern psychology to allow for some legitimate reasons to explain why law breakers have done what they have done. It certainly does not seem fair to put a murderer in prison when we find that he was beaten by his parents when a child. Our equal rights to happiness require that a child molester be given therapy rather than punishment.

"The conservatives, having a longer historical existence, believe that people have the ability to reason and have done what they have done consciously. They had the freedom to choose. Those criminals chose a behavior that society had outlawed. They therefore ought to be punished."

 —"In my country we also find conflicts between liberty and equality which are not in the political sphere. Kelsi, you mentioned earlier that at the race track in some races, like the Kentucky Derby, we give all the horses the same weighted jockey. They have an equal opportunity to achieve. They have equality at the beginning of the race. After the start they have liberty. But in a race like the Santa Anita Handicap we give the horses different weights hoping that they will all come out in a dead heat. This of course never happens. Here we have a hoped for equality at the end of the race.

"When betting on sports events we give the underdog a number of potential points. The gambler therefore enjoys an equality that the players on the field do not. On the field the favorite usually wins.

 —"As I have indicated liberty and equality are generally quite incompatible ideals. They get confused because our idea of democracy is so confusing. We start with one vote per person then the electorate votes for liberty—for freedom of speech and freedom of religion. But those who do not succeed when given the liberty to achieve in the economic fields go back to the equalitarian idea of people being equal at the ballot box and assume that the same equality should somehow be spread throughout their lives. Equal education, equal food, equal housing, equal pay, equal pensions, equal healthcare and all other possible areas of inequality that they say that their equal rights somehow entitle them to. Of course education is never equal. There are better schools, better teachers, better books and more effective parents to help their children to learn.

"Most people agree on equality of opportunity. But it is impossible to achieve with human teachers, who are unequal in training, aptitude, diligence and commitment. The USSR attempted it with every child in the same grade learning the same things on the same day.

"Lower social class students may be more rowdy, have more gang connections, and more of a need for power in their lives because they often haven't been loved, so they have low self esteem.

Liberty requires that we have freedom of movement, freedom of political speech and criticism, the duty to tell the truth, the right to all available knowledge and to a politically impartial education, the right to privacy, freedom of association, and freedom of discussion.

 .—"It is a pity that the highest levels of human needs and achievements are enslaved by their practitioners. Priests and imams pervert the high level knowledge of the prophets. Judges and lawyers pervert the laws for their personal interests. Parliaments and congresses pervert the popular views of the people's democratic needs. Universities and academies hold knowledge and art at the level of the present orthodoxy and prevent flights to the next level of human achievement. The army protects the leader rather than the people of the nation. Are we automatons or unique beings. Do we deserve liberty?

 \- "Equal housing is not available to all. In many countries there are housing subsidies where the poor can nestle together cozily in their slums. And while food supplements and food stamps put some grub in the gut, the poor don't get lobster or Châteaubriand to supplement their gruel. Equal pay for equal work sounds good, but many women still don't make the same money for the same job that men do. However this is more often being rectified. Pension equality is not a reality, but many laws tend to reduce the relative inequalities that were evident in the workplace. Equal healthcare, however, is more often available in Western societies.

"So early writers of constitutions in the West, while they started with ideals such as equality before the law and freedom of speech, generally only men were is the recipients of these liberties. Equal male suffrage, equality before the law and equality of opportunity sound as if they are purely equalitarian—but in fact they are principles of liberty, of freedom. They are quite different from equal healthcare or equal rights to food. These presuppose some basic equality of the essence of people. It is often difficult to separate the true meanings of terms with the common understanding of them."

  \--"As Nietzsche said 'any concept that has a history is impossible to define.' I guess that is why we are so confused with the ideas of democracy or liberty and equality. They each have so many facets that there are too many ideas associated with the basic word."

 —"I think we've been down this road before. The more general and common an idea, the more confusing it is talk about it. That is why people like Dr. Singh (108) emphasized the precision we must give to our semantic meanings."

 —"Political theorists have long waged their wars on this front. The libertarians versus the equalitarians: Voltaire versus Rousseau, Hamilton versus Jefferson, Mirabeau versus Robespierre-- freeing the potentials versus leveling the differences. But as Edmund Burke observed 'They never equalize who seek to level.' (109) on the other hand, The British Marxist Harold Laski wrote, liberty implies equality: They are not in conflict nor even separate, but are 'different facets of the same ideal.' (110) By equality Laski meant 'an opportunity for the full development of personality.' (111) "

 —"So Laski merely defines equality the same as most people would define an ultimate liberty, positive liberty I think they call it, then says that the two are the same. It would be like me defining a newborn mongrel puppy as being an adult grand champion winner, then saying that the two are the same. We have gone into these semantic pitfalls both with Dr. Wang in Kino and with Dr. Singh in Indus. I guess I am finally getting the hang of it. Definitions certainly must define what they are attempting to define and not something else in order to redirect our thinking. Remember in the sentence in George Orwell's Animal Farm that 'All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.'"

 —"We might define things as Orwell did in'1984' that 'war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.' Defining concepts as their opposites seldom works, unless you have a orator with profound abilities or an audience with unsolvable frustrations looking for any answer—even the implausible."

 —"We can all agree on that, but look at all the trouble that Pope Pius IX started when he defined conception as the start of human life. Certainly a powerful person in a church or in government can have profound effects on society from the date of the utterance until far in the future."

  —"From my readings, I have seen those who believe in the fact of equality and want an equal society. I see those who believe in the fact of equality but do not think that society can or should work on those principles. I read those who believe in the fact of inequality and want an inequalitarian world, and I had seen those who do not believe that people are equal but think that a better society can be achieved if they are treated as if they were.

"Is the idea that all humans are equal a self-evident truth or a flagrant falsehood? Is it necessary for true liberty or is it a major impediment to progress? If equality is a fact, the implications are far more immediate than if it is merely an ideal. Can it be defined away as a natural right? Or should a more pragmatic idea be employed, that it is a useful concept in maintaining society?

"Those who argue for the fact of equality generally use the ideas of: natural rights, the infinite worth of humans, intuition, some vague idea of an hypothesized state of nature that existed before civilization, or the idea that we are made in the image of God.

"Alexis de Tocqueville perceptively observed: Among the laws that rule human societies, there is one which seems to me more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which equality of conditions is increased. It is this sense of mutual association that de Tocqueville observed in America that stands at the heart of a well-functioning democratic nation. It is not a new notion.

"In his famous oration to commemorate the Athenians who died in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta, Pericles extolled democracy and praised the ancient city-state as the envy of the world. He reminded his fellow citizens that democracy comprised not only a constitution with equality before the law and opportunity for all, but the day-to-day relations of Athenians with each other. It is the "laws themselves" that are obeyed, including the 'unwritten laws that acknowledge the spirit of the written laws.'"

LIBERTY

  "A problem develops when the power of the government is too great. The Americans revolted against the power of King George. The 'Occupy Wall Street' protesters were complaining about the power of the banking system and the stock market. Wherever the power is, whether by the popularly elected or by the men of religions appointed by God, when liberty is suppressed the effect on the common people is just as great. We might say that slavery can be initiated by slave traders or by Marx's defined 'capitalists,' those who make their money on other people's labor. People can be enslaved by democracy, monarchy, capitalism, communism or religion. The amount of real liberty a person has is not determined by the form of government, of the economic systems, or the religion—it is determined by how that form of government, economic system or religion functions. Soviet communism theoretically was to free people to obtain the fruits of their labor. In actuality they were enslaved. Capitalism in its earliest sense made people slaves but labor unions gave them great liberty. Christianity, according to Jesus, was to free the Jews from the enslavement of the Romans and of their conservative rabbis in the Temple, but as his religion developed it turned against his own people, often enslaving and killing them.

"The question here is—who is to determine their own liberty, those who can achieve power at the ballot box or through their bank accounts, or those who are in the majority. Is it the muscle of the masses that should control or the muscle of money? Usually it is the muscle of money that enslaves the human herd.

"Then of course, you have the conflicting values to total liberty. When the British government put surveillance cameras on many streets some saw that it interfered with their total liberty to be unnoticed. Others were quite happy because it increased their chances of not being robbed and not being killed by street assailants. So which is more important? If you die you lost your liberty to live. What about having economic sustenance but not having much political liberty—as happened in the USSR.

"The extent of a person's or a people's liberty to choose to live as he or they desire must be weighed against the claims of many other values, of which equality, or justice, or happiness, or security, or public order are perhaps the most obvious examples. For this reason, liberty cannot be unlimited. Equalitarians believe that their liberty is often negatively affected by those who are strong, especially economically strong. They therefore believe that there must be a balance of some sort and that unbridled economic liberty must be restrained.

EXTENDING LIBERTY TO LICENSE—AND CORRUPTION

 —"If we think that the world should be just, how do we eliminate the bribes that we see so commonly around the world. I had a friend in Greece who needed a heart angioplasty. When he went to the hospital there were signs with open hands on the walls. It was clearly an invitation to cross those palms with silver. My friend was covered by the state health insurance which paid $13,000 for the operation, but he also had to give the doctor $7000 in bribe money to do it.

"The Greek constitution guarantees healthcare for its citizens. But the Greeks, like the people in most nations with health care, don't pay enough taxes to cover the costs. In fact the debts of the Greek health care system are one of the major problems that detonated the Greek financial bomb in 2009. But there is more to the problem. Because suppliers, such as pharmaceutical companies, were not being paid they often stopped dealing with the Greek hospital system. In fact before the financial tumble, Greek hospitals owed about a billion dollars in pharmaceutical bills. Recently hospital patients were told to bring their own drugs to the hospital.

"According to Transparency International, Greece is the most corrupt country in Europe. I know that when I needed a physician in Thessaloniki several years ago I was told that it would cost me $30 to $70 to get a quick appointment."

 —"Government officials say doctors are among the biggest tax evaders in a country with plenty of tax shirkers. Since Greece's financial collapse, Nikos Lekkas and his team of tax-crime specialists have started more than 700 in-depth audits of doctors, an effort the government says is aimed at containing costs and boosting revenues. One physician declared no income for four years, Mr. Lekkas said that the auditors found €2.2 million of income in that period. Another had €53,000 in declared income and €812,000 off the books. Giorgios Patoulis, the head of the doctors' union in greater Athens, decried the tax audits. 'The objective was mainly to smear' doctors, he said. A doctor needs a 'respectable fee, so he and his family can live.' Doctors say that reimbursement rates—particularly for primary care—are exceedingly low.

"In America corruption seems to be more lethal than in other countries. Lobbyists can give money to congressman for their election campaigns who will willingly support the efforts of the lobbyists in spite of the fact that the legislation may be harmful to their constituents. As examples, in the negotiations for the healthcare law of 2010, the president wanted a limit on claims for medical malpractice. Lawyers continually take potential malpractice cases that will net them large amounts of money, usually 40% of the total award, this makes medical malpractice suits very lucrative for the claimant's and the lawyers even if there was no actual malpractice. The jury system selection in the US allows the more intelligent people to often opt out of jury service, so the less intelligent jurors are often easily manipulated emotionally by shrewd lawyers. This requires expensive medical malpractice insurance by doctors and it increases American medical costs. Socialized medicine systems, of course, do not have this problem.

"President Obama wanted a federal option which would compete with private insurers and would be able to lower costs. But the insurance company lobbies defeated that proposal. They were then able to continue their multimillion dollar salaries at the expense of their clients.

"Years prior, under the Bush administration, a Medicare provision was set in place that required all drugs to be bought by patients. Prior to that time many indigent patients were given drugs free by the pharmaceutical companies.

"But American governmental corruption is not always done through lobbyists. The Koch brothers are second only to Bill Gates as American billionaires. As oilmen from Texas their companies are among the top 10 polluters in the US. Naturally they don't want climate controls to become part of the US laws. Recently they had given over $4 million per year to groups that deny climate change. They are the biggest donors from the oil industry to the congressional committee that deals with oversight. In fact they had given $300,000 to members of the House energy and commerce committee in one year alone. They have given about $20 million a year to organizations that favor policies that will enrich them. Along with their other polluting activities they produce 2.2 billion pounds of formaldehyde which is a carcinogen. They are certainly doing their best to influence government to kill Americans." (112)

  "In 2012 the American military didn't want the tank that Congress had budgeted, but the tank manufacturer, General Dynamics, had given large donations to Congressmen and lobbyists and many jobs would have been lost. Too bad they couldn't put those workers in jobs that were needed.

"I guess that every country has corruption, but I wonder if any country allows it in its laws as much as the U.S. does. The freedom of speech amendment to the Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to encompass just about any kind of speech unless you are trying to get somebody to join you to kill somebody now. And the court has recently declared that corporations are people so they are not limited in their contributions to the government. So I guess that in our country freedom has been equated with license in many cases--particularly when it enriches our lawmakers."

  "I wonder if the little guy benefits as much by our commitment to freedom as the big money guys. I also wonder why the Americans continually chastise China for its corruption when it is continually catching and prosecuting its violators, but in our country the same crimes that the Chinese are prosecuting are legal. We prosecute some financial cheaters who cheat their investors but not the congressional cheaters who sell out their constituents. Of course when you make the laws you are above the law.

"Like God outlawing murder in the Ten Commandments but wiping out the world's population in the Great Flood or allowing an innocent Jesus to be murdered on the cross. And of course he causes tsunamis and wars that wipe out innocent people. So I guess the Christian congressmen are merely following their Creator's lead in letting their actions speak louder than their words.

"After all, what is the point of 'freedom'? Is it to live better? Would you choose freedom of speech over a car or a house, or have the car and house but have your TV or Internet censored--with only pro-government propaganda and no detective stories? Perhaps reduced corruption in government. What freedom would you allow for atheists, ancestor worshipers, Satanists? Which would you honestly choose? What about letting only educated people who keep current on events in the world and nation being able to vote? Would you give up your right to vote for $200,000 dollars a year? Would you allow the freedom of everyone to drive a car without a license and without liability insurance? How much would you give to get rid of the lobbyists so that your representatives could be totally responsible to their constituents? How much would you pay annually to give everyone in your country the human rights that the UN has posited –How much would you be willing to pay to give every human being in the world those human rights? Let's review them. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"Article 22 says 'Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.'

"Article 23 states 'Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.'

"Article 24 says 'Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.'

"Article 25 states 'Everyone has the right to an education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.'

"Article 27 affirms that 'Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.'

"Article 28 states that 'Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.'

"But then in Article 29 the responsibilities of the citizens is posed. 'Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

"I agree with these 'rights' but how many countries are granting them to their citizens?"

 "Lee, you know as well as I do that the poverty caused by having too many babies prevents most countries from granting these so called rights. Rich countries, like Norway, do it, but poor countries like Greece and the U.S. either don't have the money or the will to push these equalitarian dreams."

WE SHOULD CLARIFY OUR DESIRES

  "You Americans don't seem to understand the basics of your government. So many Americans are against socialism and communism, yet two of your favorite entitlements are Social Security and Medicare. Medicare is actually communistic and Social Security is socialistic. What is it that you want? A recent Pew poll showed 50% of you were positive towards capitalism but at the same time you are having your 'Occupy Wall Street' and similar demonstrations against capitalism. It's no wonder that millionaire and media propagandists can turn your opinions and whims without ever worrying about your citizens doing any real thinking.

"Since 1979 your workers' wages have not risen above the inflation rate even though your productivity has gone up 80%. But the incomes of your top 1% of your population have gone up 240%.

"The rich people around the world have put $20 trillion in tax havens like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. (113) That twenty trillion is more than the gross domestic products of the U.S. and Japan combined. So there are huge amounts of untaxed profits that the countries of the world could use to reduce their national debts. That is certainly unjust from an equalitarian view, but quite just from an economic libertarian view. Of course if we look at responsibility to support one's government it might well be irresponsible."

 —"As you know, only half of us Americans pay income taxes to the Federal government. This could to be rather irresponsible. Here's where our federal income tax dollars go: health care 22%, social security and defense 20% each, federal retirees 7%, interest 6%. There isn't much left for education, science research, foreign aid and so forth. How fair is it that many people take so much more from the government than they give. And I'm talking here of not only the very poor but also of the very rich.

"And I'm sure you're aware that spending levels in our states also vary widely: West Virginia spends just 11 percent of its budget on kindergarten through 12th grade education, for example, while Vermont spends 33 percent. It is no wonder that the young in Vermont are more ready for college while the young in West Virginia are more ready for coal mining. In Wyoming, just 7 percent of state spending goes to Medicaid, while that program consumes 30 percent of spending in Missouri and Florida.

"How can we have real equality of opportunity for our potential academic and political leaders when the federal government and most states will not support a top notch educational system from kindergarten through the doctoral levels?"

 —"It probably isn't possible to have a society in which everyone is completely free and has a real opportunity to fulfill his or her positive liberty potentials? Whether we take some ideal of a democratic society or use Rousseau's idea of the 'general will of the people' there will certainly be people who will not agree with the majority. There will probably be one or several minorities who will consider themselves to be oppressed by the will of the majority.

"And of course the rational people in a society, at least those who think they are rational, want to make others see as clearly as they do. Whether it be the right to have an abortion versus no such right, capital punishment versus no capital punishment, the rights of animals to certain liberties versus no such animal rights, reduced government spending or more government spending, reducing social welfare benefits versus controlling the national debts, the list can go on and on as you can see. What is justice in each of these cases? Whose liberty is more important?

"Many of us question the relationship between a person's desires and the freedom to attempt to make them happen. As long as you are not prevented by law from doing certain things, the ability to make them happen is pretty much up to you.

"We might also question whether many desires make you freer. The Buddha taught that we become free and happy by eliminating our desires. Perhaps we might look deeper at that! Certainly in your country particularly, people have been enslaved by their desires—for bigger televisions, more complicated mobile phones, more social networking, more extensive video games, bigger houses, and the list goes on and on."

 —"What about when a society puts restraints on someone who has broken the law or is controlled by an addiction? Society may restrict freedom of the electorate by gerrymandering the district. But it may aid in freedom by requiring wheelchair ramps and beeping stoplights to aid the blind.

"Does it restrict people when it does not give equal educations or equal amounts and qualities of food? Here we have an overlap between equality and liberty.

"To what degree must rational thinking be required in order to use the blessings of liberty?

"When one wants an abortion but the state has rules such as having to be shown an ultrasound picture of the embryo or fetus. Is this true freedom? If one is not allowed to treat one's child with faith healing--is that freedom. If one has shown extraordinary academic abilities but cannot afford to go to the university because she must take care of her family by working— is this a denial of positive freedom?"

 —"As we shall see shortly, equality of opportunity is dependent on both positive and negative concepts of liberty. And there are some in the 'positive liberty' camp who would require that in order to have real positive liberty for all people, it would be necessary to give at least minimal standards of living along with the generally required outstanding education that every society needs and every person should have.

"The idea of what is 'just' has moved from an idea of inequality as the standard in the writings of Plato and Aristotle to the idea of equality being essential to justice in the 17th century that meant primarily an equality of some rights—not really an equality off people. The idea evolved from ideals like equality before the law and equal voting rights for 'citizens', to an equality of needs with 19th Century Marx. The idea of ethical behavior has followed this evolution of an equality of needs so that now it has become almost a basic assumption that people are equal or should be treated as equals. A few voices cry in the wilderness that our ethics and our ideas of justice should follow from the realities of nature—that we are not equal. Nietzsche was such a voice.

"A major question is should we base our ethics and our concept of justice on the realities of nature or should we base it on what may make society run more smoothly?

"You could see in the 'Arab Spring' of 2011 when people felt they were too far down the economic equality and political equality ladders they demonstrated in Tunisia and Egypt and got their way and they revolted with guns in Libya, Yemen and Syria—and got their way again."

 —"They got rid of the dictators but they didn't get more jobs, so they got more political equality but economically they were still looking for jobs to do. Getting rid of the dictators is one thing, but abandoning the paternal and maternal calls for more babies is an unthinkable tampering with tradition. So the mobs of unemployed youths will swell, tax revenues will be strained and living conditions will be reduced again. They may have the vote-- but you can't vote for the impossible to happen."

 —"But isn't that what we do on every election day?

 —"That's a problem with modern day democracy, we vote for people who promise us the moon but have no realistic plan to pay for the rocket ships to get us there.

"But back to justice. If we base justice on the inequality of nature, the people on the bottom will be unhappy. If we base it on economic equality, the people on top will be unhappy. So what has been working in your country keeps the unhappiness levels down somewhat. You have one vote per person but the people on top hire lobbyists and political funding groups to control the people you have voted for. Your citizens don't actually have much of a 'say' in government even if they have a vote. Of course the people are told that they elected their representatives, but they are pretty much in the dark about the way the representatives are influenced by monetary payoffs and contributions to their elections. When you realize that it costs about a million dollars to win a campaign for the House of Representatives. To run for the Senate costs five times that much. There are a few millionaires who run for office, but they don't always make it but it is rare to make it without a huge advertising budget and without political specialists to guide their every move and utterance.

"So should justice be actually based on liberty or equality or should you just tell the people what they want to hear then run the country along the inequalitarian lines of the survival of the fittest—which is what you Americans do. Across the world inequality thrives in people holding power, in people holding wealth, in people holding respect, even those in sports and media.

"The liberty to accomplish in the more capitalist societies has freed those who are intelligent, creative, or motivated to work long hours to amass huge fortunes. This has resulted in greater differences between the rich and the poor. I recently saw a survey by the Pew company that showed that 66% of Americans now see strong conflicts between the rich and the poor. This was an increase of 19% from just two years ago. Then there was another 23% that saw conflict, but it wasn't as strong as the majority saw. Only 7% of the respondents saw no conflicts. (114)

"The strife between rich and poor people is now seen as a bigger issue than other social conflicts, including conflict between immigrants and native-born Americans and tension between black and white Americans, according to the Pew study. Despite the perception that there is a growing conflict, the Pew report said they did not find clear support for things like government measures to address income inequality. In addition, people's perceptions of how the rich get rich have not changed much in recent years.

"One of the most vocal areas relative to liberty is in the area of women's rights. Men tend to want women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. But women want more. It surprised many when in 2012 the new prime minister of Morocco came out in favor of abortion if a woman had been raped or had been impregnated in an incestual situation. This could be the starting point for abortions on demand in Muslim ountries for women unwilling to become mothers. Estimates are that there are at least 600 abortions per day in Morocco, most of them in the back alley operating rooms. Certainly allowing women the choice of motherhood is a major step in the advancement of the liberation of women. In so many countries the only choice of occupation for a single mother is prostitution. If we are going to allow for 'positive liberty' we must open the door for other life choices than just motherhood. Certainly opening the doors of the workplace and the schools increases a country's economic success.

PREJUDICE

"The prejudices against women, just as against ethnic and religious minorities, handicaps the masses by thwarting their freedom to achieve, You never know where your best economic, academic or political leaders may emerge from. But society will suffer if the best are not given the opportunity for positive liberty. Keeping the power in the hands of the dominant males of a culture has been shown in the West to create an economic anchor for the greater society.

"Any observable difference from the hegemonic male can be an invisible hill that need not be climbed by the majority males. The impediments to inclusion may take many forms. In the UK a different speech accent is often more detrimental than race, religion or gender."

 —"It is that drive for power based on our nearly universal inferiority complexes that Chuck Chan emphasized. We all want to feel superior in some ways. Making racist remarks at a sporting event or social gathering, making gender harassing remarks, bullying and a number of other such actions really indicate the deep inferiority feeling of the speaker who is trying to verbally rise above someone who is different."

 —"What can be done to level the playing field?"

 —"It is my observation that it is far easier to punish the transgressor than to prevent the prejudicial action. But prevention is the better option. It makes me think of Martin Luther King's comment that 'I don't want to be hated until I have earned it.'"

 —"Con, how do you suggest we prevent these actions that are based on our common inferiority feelings?"

 —"Well, Wreck, none of us want to admit that we are inferior-- that is why we typically put down others through bullying, harassing and ordering other people around. My idea would be to spend a great idea time telling everyone that such behavior is an indication of feeling inferior. This should make these bullies and harassers think a second time before opening their mouths to put down other people. And if they do it, the object of their venom can retort with the truth that they are just illustrating their inferiority. Of course to do this the education program should be extensive and started very early in life."

 —" I think that is a great idea. Sexual harassment has been largely controlled by law cases brought against businesses. Big awards against some companies made all businesses aware of the negatives and reduced sexual harassment considerably in the US. But it probably didn't eliminate the thoughts behind the actions. Making people understand early in life that we must understand our own inferiority feelings and work to improve ourselves rather than trying to raise ourselves by stepping on others would certainly go a long way in eliminating these practices and allowing the objects of our prejudices the positive liberty that society undoubtedly needs."

 —"I wonder if it might not even save lives. I would certainly think that Anders Breivik, the mass murder in Norway, and James Holmes, the Colorado mass murderer, were merely reacting to their giant inferiority feelings."

INCOME INEQUALITY

 —"But prejudice is not only found in psychological outbursts like bullying and mass murdering. The same prejudice is found among most of the rich. After all, they are superior because they are rich—even if they merely inherited their riches. It is therefore obvious that they deserve their truffles and the poor deserve their gruel. Your American Republican Party has become a political force to not only conserve the wealth of your rich, but to accelerate its accumulation."

 \--"I can't understand that the party has so much support when a huge proportion of its members are being financially screwed by the economic leaders of the party. Texas oilmen and Wall Street bankers naturally want low taxes and more ways to hide and conserve their wealth. If we look to Europe we see a quite different theory of the importance of money and more importance attached to the use of our time.

"The OECD continues to stress economic equality in its publications. It recently opined that: 'The provision of freely accessible and high-quality public services, such as education, health, and family care, is important.' In order to make this happen it stated that:

"Reforming tax and benefit policies is the most direct instrument for increasing redistributive effects. Large and persistent losses in low-income groups following recessions underline the importance of government transfers and well-conceived income-support policies.' Then it suggests increasing taxes on the rich saying: 'The growing share of income going to top earners means that this group now has a greater capacity to pay taxes. In this context governments may re-examine the redistributive role of taxation to ensure that wealthier individuals contribute their fair share of the tax burden.' (115)

"Divided we Stand also looked into the impact of global developments on rising wage dispersion and employment trends over the past quarter century up to the 2008-09 financial crisis. For the OECD area as a whole, they surmised that: technological progress led to higher wages and more employment for workers with higher level skills, state reaction helps to reduce unemployment but .tributes to greater income inequality.

AMERICAN INCOME INEQUALITY

"In that same report, using the gini coefficient, it found that the U.S. had the fourth highest level

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of economic inequality. Only Chile, Mexico and Turkey were more unequal. Inequality among working-age people in your country had risen by 25% since 1980. In 2008, the average income of the top 10% of Americans was $114 000. That was nearly 15 times higher than that of the bottom 10%, who had an average income of $7,800. The advantage of rich over poor has increased steadily up from 10 to 1 in the mid- 1980s then 12 to 1 in the mid-1990s."

  "In your country your efforts of equalizing income come in the form of income tax credits and tax deductions, neither of which are great benefits for your poor, who don't pay income taxes. So your taxation and welfare benefits play a small role in equalizing your incomes.

"Income taxes and cash benefits play a small role in redistributing income in the United States, reducing inequality by less than a fifth. In a typical OECD country, it is a quarter. Only in Korea, Chile and Switzerland is the effect smaller than in the U.S. Your federal government supplies food stamps, inexpensive housing and a few other benefits but a good deal of your economic help is supplied by the states—and as the state amass budget deficits, help for the poor is often among the first things to be affected. Most OECD countries provide relatively generous outright payments rather than reductions in income taxes. But they still collect their value added taxes on food, goods and services. So the taxes that the poor pay from their generous welfare benefits help to reimburse their national benefactors."

 —"Our wealthiest Americans have collected the bulk of income gains the past three decades. Our Republican presidents and congresses have been pushed by the lobbyists for the rich to reduce tax rates for them—telling our citizens that such tax cuts benefit everybody and that they will increase the amount of money available for business investment. This would be true except that they invest in foreign countries, outsourcing American jobs while they increase their own salaries and their net wealth in stocks and options. During these years our top income tax rate dropped from 70% in 1981 to 35% in 2010. And much of the added income found its way to tax free hideouts like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland.

"At the same time the number of hours worked increased in our country by 20% among our lower wage workers. You might not know that welfare benefits such as unemployment pay, medical care, food and housing supplements account for 6% of Americans' income. In other OECD countries it averages 16%. We Americans definitely fight income equality as much as we can.

"These economic facts are extensions of the increased liberty that our society has developed in other areas. Our freedom of speech court decisions are well past what other countries will allow. The same is true of our rights to own guns. There is also the freedom of religions and the religious leaders to move our legislatures in spite of a constitutional separation of church and state. Then there is the freedom to change our government laws, from municipal to national, when people have only unprovable opinions—not facts. If money and unwarranted opinions are most important then we are on the right track. But if the happiness of the population is the reason for people to come together in a society, then we should follow the more equalitarian ideas of the Scandinavians."

 —"And we certainly need better education in the sciences and math if we are going to catch up with those who have passed us in the economic race."

 —"Maybe we should shift our national concerns to the economic areas like developing infrastructure and training for today's jobs instead of having gay marriage, abortion, the Biblical account of Creation, and sexual abstinence as our major national concerns."

 —"Well ethics are essential in a functioning society but our political ethics are a shambles when you compare us to most countries in the OECD. Money talks and our lawmakers listen—but out citizens can't hear it because the volume is turned up on their video games, TVs and earphones. They not only drown out the voices of political reason, but also the true voice of God. I'm afraid that too many of my brothers listen only to misguided ministers and muftis and don't spend time knowing what God really wants for us—and Jesus said that it was not worldly riches."

 —"While Lee and I quote the OECD studies, you must realize that they have a strong bias toward equality. And as you know, here in The Colonies we are guided by liberty. But we differ from you Americans who point to your Declaration of Independence saying that all men are created equal. You then use this to toss out economic tidbits to your rabble so they won't revolt. You tell them that if they will only study and work hard they can achieve like Horatio Alger, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet—but you know that few surpass their parents today, and it gets tougher to go to college as the income of the parents is continually reduced. As you know our system in the Colonies (116) emphasizes equality of opportunity far more than your American system. And our parent licensing laws guarantee education to as high a level as a person can profit. Our young really do have an outstanding chance at success if they study and work hard. We do what you merely talk about."

REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH

 —"The Pollyana thinkers, like those at OECD have great ideas to solve our world's problems. Just send everyone to school and through college. Let the governments and businesses create more and better jobs for everyone. Then pay the workers better and encourage them to keep improving their skills throughout their lives. Then do all this for every child—no matter how poor or large the family!"

 —"Don't forget their ideas for redistributing wealth. They want to tax the rich so that they pay their 'fair share' of taxes. Obviously their concern is for equality of educational opportunity, which we support, but when people don't achieve to an acceptable economic level, they want the rich in society to give the poor their hard earned money, We here in The Colonies find this to be an economically and philosophically repulsive idea that is contrary to the laws of nature—such as 'the survival of the fittest.' As I have often indicated, these people who want economic equality never say why unequal people should be treated equally—whether they are unequal through talent or toil. And the one possible metaphysical non-provable idea that might play for equality, the possible equality of souls, is less acceptable as these educated peoples reject the religions of Abraham's God. As I've said, the ideas of equal liberties like one person-one vote or equal protections of the laws have evolved in our non-logical opinions to a belief that people are actually equal in some abstract way. We are certainly not equal in any physical, mental, or motivational sense."

 —"But as you pointed out earlier, if our souls are equal, that would validate our modern political equalitarian assumption."

 —"But, you know as well as I do that the separation of church and state in most modern countries precludes a non-provable religious belief of one religion from becoming a political pillar in the theory of the economic guidelines for a modern utopia. I can tell you, as a former businessman, that excessive taxation is counter-productive in increasing business growth and increasing employment opportunities. Taxing producers to give to non-producers is economic suicide.

"If we are going to use a religious view for our economics we had better use the other Christian idea that our souls are not equal. That at least jibes with common sense."

 —"Since my position is what you call 'reactionary' I actually agree with you. I was just playing the devil's advocate—or should I say the angel's advocate?"

 —"You know that my country and I agree that we are unequal and that economic benefits should go to those with skills and intelligence who work hard. But we are swimming upstream against the equalitarian social welfare states. It seems that we, in The Colonies, and you Americans, are more for liberty and against equality. Of course your politicians talk about equality when it suits them.

"We need to prevent lots of negative and illogical beliefs and actions in the psychological, political and economic areas of human existence. So often the poor or the lazy, believing in their invisible equality, believe they have the right to collect money from the government that it has accumulated through either taxing those who work or by borrowing the money from bond holders.

"Recently I read of a Michigan woman who won a $1 million lottery jackpot, netting over $500.000 after taxes, and admitted she's continued to collect $200 a month in public assistance. That's not all: The 24-year-old also says she deserves the financial aid because she's now saddled with expenses related to having two houses. She said that she deserved the extra income just like any 'taxpayer on public assistance.' Of course people on public assistance only pay sales taxes not income taxes—unless they win the lottery! She had, however, paid sales taxes on her new car and other taxes on her lottery winnings. Her story was not unique in Michigan. A year earlier a man on public assistance had won $2 million and still collected his public assistance dole.

"About the same time the British Exchequer Secretary was investigating workers in the 'black economy' who were giving discounts for cash. This allowed the contractors and workers to avoid taxes. (117)

"The self centered idea that we are the most important people in the world, and no one else counts, is one of the factors leading to a belief in the requirement that we have income equality to some degree. In many countries in Europe, especially in Scandinavia, the rich are highly taxed on their incomes and on their personal fortunes. People on sick leave and those who can't or won't work are well paid. They often move to less expensive countries like Spain or Thailand where their governmental stipends allow them to live like kings—or at least like barons!"

 —"I think that if more people believed Jesus's dictate cited in Mark 12:31 that you should 'Love your neighbor as yourself' we might not have so much opposition to equalizing income. But you know my conservative position, or reactionary as you call me. I believe that people should use their God-given talents and ability to work to achieve their economic success. I interpret Revelation 22:12 in both an economic and a spiritual sense. 'And behold, I come quickly and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.'"

 —"For a reactionary you sound rather socialistic. Remember that the Soviet Constitution noted that in socialism 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his work' was the rule."

 —"I don't think hard work and its rewards are limited to any economic system. Whether God said it or Lenin said it, the truth is obvious."

 —"That obviously runs counter to the ideas that people should be rewarded just for being human. That of course is the intent of some equalitarian thinkers. Having babies you cannot support, not working at the job, not finishing the schooling necessary to get the jobs that are available, claiming pay because of job stresses that are not crippling, are some of the obstacles to allowing everyone an equality of income."

 \--"Of course there are times when people are legitimately out of work, like in the recessions of 2008 and onward in the West."

 \--"But as Kelsi said, there were not qualified people for the jobs that were available. There are fewer and fewer jobs for high school graduates. The better jobs are in math and the natural sciences as well as in information technology. Robots do so much of the work in construction and manufacturing today, so we need people with the training to invent or control the robots."

 -"That is all true, but in order to get the economic system working effectively the idea of people being somehow equal, without ever having to prove such an equality, is draining the economic reserves of most countries in the West. That is why I went into the different theories about equality. If we are not equal and we are all going to die at some point, what is the point of spending so much money on nonproducing people?

"In your country from 1980 to this year your income after taxes has gone down 30% for the lowest 20% of your population. It has gone down about 20% for the next 20% of your population. The middle 20% went down about 5% in the last 30 years. Even the top 20% only went up about 25%. But your top 1% of the population increased by between 120% and 240%.

"The before tax income of your top 1% has gone up from $500,000 to about $2 million per household. Your top 20% has gone up from about $100,000 to $200,000. But the bottom 80% is not going up at all.

"The puzzling thing is that the American public doesn't know—and I wonder if they even care. In fact many keep voting into office millionaires who will keep them poor in their ignorance."

KEEP THE CITIZENS IGNORANT

  "I just can't get over the number of Americans who vote for conservative candidates who are holding them down economically and intellectually. When your family has been voting for the conservatives for years and the candidates tell you that the opponents are socialists or communists, and you know that those are bad bad, so you vote for the people who tell you that they are for liberty and that you should keep your hard-earned money by keeping taxes low. Of course you should keep your 'entitlements' like Social Security and Medicare even though you haven't contributed enough to pay your share.

When Americans are asked what percent of wealth the top 20% of Americans own they generally guess about 60%. Actually it is 85%. Two university researchers decided to test Americans' perception of wealth in our country. They made three pie charts depicting three possibilities in income levels by quintiles. One pie chart showed wealth being equal for each 20% of the population. 43% of Americans chose this as being the actual wealth distribution in the U.S.

None of the pie charts were labeled as to what they represented. The second unlabeled pie chart was actually Sweden's wealth distribution. The top 20% of people hold 35% of Sweden's wealth. 47% of Americans thought that this represented the U.S.

The third pie chart actually represented the U.S. with the top 20% of the population owning 85% of the wealth. Only 10% of Americans chose this chart as accurately representing their country's wealth distribution. (118)

TAX DEDUCTIONS FOR CHARITIES RESULT IN GOVERNMENTAL SUPPORT FOR THE LESS FORTUNATE—THE UNEQUAL

"The same principle holds for income tax deductions for charities. People don't analyze the cost of in charitable giving for the government. And they give a lot of money to 'charities' that are not helping people. These deductions are quite common in the West, particularly in the US and the UK. When the rich give to charities, the government picks up a large percentage of their deduction."

 —"But certainly many charities are worthwhile. However I understand the point. One time I gave $100,000 to a charity. People thought I was so generous, but they didn't understand that because I was in the 35% income tax bracket and deducted my contribution. I had only given $65,000 because my deduction saved me $35,000 on my taxes. The US government actually was responsible for $35,000 of my 'gift.' So the government is the major contributor to charities and churches. It subsidizes charities with which it probably disagrees, such as: terrorist front organizations, churches and charities paying high salaries to its principles, and charities that give little of their income to the charities they collect for.

"Very questionable 'charities' such as the Coalition of Police and Sheriffs, American Veterans Relief Foundation and the Disabled Firefighters Fund all had the same address in California. Of the $19 million collected between 2005 and 2008 only 5.4% was spent on the charities. The telemarketers got 80 to 90% of the money they raised. Another such organization was the American Relief Organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. Supposedly it collected money to provide food and other necessities to Native Americans on reservations. Of the $665,000 raised 1% went to the charity--$6400. Does it sound like the American government would likely support such organizations? But it did! Because charities in the U.S. have been given great latitude in how much of the money raised must go to the charity, legal action against them is often impossible to initiate.

"The Mormon Church is estimated to be taking in between $4 and $7 billion a year in tithes from its members and making that much again from its business ventures. It does take care of its own and also contributes some to other needy causes. Then there are the university athletic department donors who get special perks, like preferred seating for games. But whether it is a church business or a football team—the government is paying part of the 'donations.'

In 2012 California sued a supposed veterans' charity for fraud. Help Hospitalized Veterans was established in 1971 to provide therapeutic aids to veterans, according to its website. In the last 3 years the charity raised more than $108 million in contributions. Only 38% went to the actual charity. The president had a salary of $900,000 and the former president had received $2.3 million, including a lump sum retirement of almost $2 million. Some of the money was diverted to another charity Conquer Cancer and Alzheimer's Now. The former president had given himself a salary there of nearly a half million dollars. And there was much more. (119) So again the donors and the government have been duped by unscrupulous people who utilize ineffective laws while our generous, though nearly bankrupt, government to helps to fund it."

 —"I would say that our low flat income tax with no deductions makes much more sense."

 —"But there is more. Years ago charities, both legitimate and fraudulent, started using professional telemarketers to phone people and give their pitch to donate. They were paid well for each donation they got. But people soon tired of the constant unwanted phone calls so they got their legislators to enact a law that allowed them to sign up on a 'do not call' list that was somewhat effective in reducing these bothering calls.

"As more people signed up for the "do not call" list, telemarketers had fewer people they could call, so charities, no matter how ineffective and unscrupulous they were, could get federal help on their mailings, with large discounts on postage from a Postal Service that is $18 billion in debt and losing as much as $20 billion a year because its expenses greatly exceed its revenue. Yet it can give more than a 75% discount for 'non-profit' mailing. So again the government pays even if it does not want to.

"In some cases large donors to charities have members of their families employed by the charities with large salaries as officers or trustees of the charitable organizations. The John Staffer Charitable Trust paid $130,000 salaries to its trustees. Three universities were given large grants from the trust. Three of the trustees were also trustees of the colleges that benefited from the grants.

"Then there are the huge tax breaks that the federal, state, and local governments give to religions through income tax deductions, tax-free housing for ministers, tax-free church properties and the lack of sales taxes from exempt items such as Bibles and other religious books and trinkets. Clergy are also allowed to 'irrevocably opt out' of Social Security. This gives them a pay raise of about 18%. No other employed group can do this. With no other retirement insurance many become destitute. Congress therefore comes to the rescue every few years and lets them opt back in—because after all, they are doing God's work!"

 \--"This government support of religion and its clergies seems to fly in the face of the separation of church and state allowed by the First Amendment. The government may not have 'established a religion by law' but it certainly helps in the establishment of religion in reality. Just look at the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag where President Eisenhower signed into law the addition of the words 'under God' to follow the phrase 'one nation'. It was a change long sought by both Catholics and Protestants. With one in four or five Americans being Catholic and 67% of the Supreme Court justices of that faith, along with 30% of the Congress they have some clout in legislation. With 2% of the population being Jewish and 33% of Supreme Court justices and 8% of members of Congress, they too have influence beyond their numbers. Protestants are about 50% of the population. They number 57% of the Congress but only 17% of Supreme Court justices. So the religions carry a lot of clout."

"I wonder how many of the voting religious believers actually lose money because of the pro-religious tax breaks. How many would prefer a flat income tax rate with no deductions if they knew all the facts. A flat 10% tax on everybody's income with no deductions would yield as much income tax revenue as the multi-tax bracket-multiple deductions do now. Of course now the rich pay most of the personal income taxes, so they might pay less under this plan while the poorer people would pay more than they do now. Of course the rich could be taxed more in taxes on their personal wealth, as many countries now do. The inheritance taxes could also be significantly increased like you have done here in The Colonies. (120)

 —"If you have poor or sick people maybe there is a reason to have charities. But why do people give to charities? And is their giving 'just?' America has the most generous types of incentives for charity and has the highest amount of giving in the world as a proportion of GDP-- 1.67%. "The idea that the state should subsidize giving to good causes is resilient, but not easily justified." (121)

"Several factors seem to be involved in the charity giving of the wealthy. One is how rich they are and how much will the gift reduce their 'wealth comfort zone.' That is, do they still have enough money to buy Australia if they are so inclined. Another factor is what percentage of their gift are they really paying. As top tax rates went down in the U.S. the cost of a charitable donation increased for the donor. But the percentage of American wealth for most of the wealthy increased. This may be a reason that charitable deductions by the wealthy did not decrease. Another factor can be how much personal prestige they can get from a gift. An anonymous gift of $5 million to the Salvation Army may feel good to the donor, but a $5 million gift to his university to build a gymnasium with his name over the entrance assures his name for posterity. What an enticement!

"Another factor that affects charitable gifts is the cultural appreciation of such gifts, that is the importance to the culture of giving. This may be indicated by the amount of tax deductions or tax credits that the government allows. But there seems to be more than just tax breaks that motivate giving. Both the U.S. and France are generous in giving tax deductions for charity but the US citizens give 1.67% of their country's Gross Domestic Product to charity. The French give only 0.14%. Of course the overall French tax burden for all taxes, is one of the highest in the world at 45% of GDP. This compares unfavorably with that of the U.S. which is only 26%. This includes a 70% top income tax rate in France but a 35% top in the U.S."

  "By the time the French have paid their taxes there is little left for truffles and champagne! But in the U.S. we need the deductions. Last I heard our church collected $6 billion a year in donations to the churches plus millions more in special relief projects called for by the bishops. We must have money to carry on God's work."

 —"If countries and churches are in financial trouble why doesn't God drop dollars from heaven, like He did bread to the starving Hebrews who were fleeing Egypt? It seems to me that in the Bible if He wanted things done like battles won or miracles performed he made sure they got done. I would think that if God was with you he would plant plenty of money in your garden, like a giant supernatural Easter bunny."

 —"Can't you ever be realistic? You know that most charities are doing good work cheaper than the government could do it. I doubt you would disagree on the money donated to higher education, like your alma mater Stanford."

 .—"You know my answer to that Wreck. Forget the churches and concentrate on legitimate charities that are actually doing society some good. There's actually one church I would include in the legitimate charities, The Salvation Army. They are deserving of any support they get—private or governmental! It is my favorite charity. And Stanford is certainly one of my favorite charities. I just wish I could give enough to support an athletic scholarship!"

 —"I know what you're saying. The cost to governments is exorbitant for all charities and these costs to the government have long been questioned by legislators and executives. Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer recently told the House of Commons in his budget speech, 'that in every case, exemption means a relief to A at the charge of B.' A hundred and fifty years ago then British Prime Minister William Gladstone was unsuccessful in his attempt to end tax deductions for charities. The rich and the charities objected and won. After all, how many would give to charities if they paid the whole amount of the gift. And how many legitimate charities would survive if they had to rely on gifts that were not at least partially supported by the government?

"The government contributions to charities and religions in not insignificant. In Britain the Treasury estimates the total cost to the state of the various tax breaks to donors and charities will be £3.64 billion, $5.5 billion, this tax year; in America the Treasury estimates that the total cost to the federal government of charitable tax breaks will be $39.6 billion, rising to $51.6 billion in two years. But that is not the only reason reform should be up for debate. The basic question posed by Gladstone remains: why should taxpayer B face a bigger tax bill because taxpayer A chooses to give to charity?"

 —"In the U.S. the lower income people give most of their money to religions. The wealthiest, on the other hand, give more money to education, the arts and health related causes."

 —"Governments might spend money through charities not just, or even mainly, because they are better value for money, but because they work in ways that governments themselves cannot. In the most famous case, America's tax breaks allow it in effect to hire the world's most successful businessman, Bill Gates, as its agent for good works, buying the public the benefit of his acumen. And in many charities there are a number of volunteers working so it could be less costly to the government 'IF' they are providing necessary services.

"But it is obvious that the government is losing much more than it is gaining in its charitable give-aways. And the rich get more of their contributions paid by the government than do poor people. This is probably a reason for their generosity. After all, if you can give $100,000 to several million dollars for a building, scholarship or endowed professorship with your name permanently attached as the donor and the government picks up 35% of the costs but doesn't add its name to the gift you come out looking pretty good. But the poor guy who gives $100 to his church may not get any deduction because he didn't earn enough to pay taxes."

 .—"And where would his contribution be recognized? Would you put the poor guy's name in a couple of prayer books?

"The people with incomes over $100,000 made 57% of donations but got 76% of the deduction benefits, $31 billion of the $41 billion of the government's subsidies to churches and charities."

 —"Giving to charities is certainly a noble activity if the charity is legitimate and a huge part of the contributions go to doing needed work. The UK has some safeguards in this area, the US does not. I wonder if the American legislators will attempt to fix this as they try to reduce their national debt. After all, a few billion dollars here and a few billion there and pretty soon you are talking about a lot of money!"

 —"You may not know that in the U.S. many non-taxable charities are being asked to give the governments 'payments in lieu of taxes' called PILOTS—and many do make such payments.

"You know that America has extremely low total taxes so there is much more of one's disposable income to contribute to a charity. Maybe our major charity should be our country. With our national debt hovering around 100% of our annual GDP we can't screw around with tax breaks for us rich guys. Right now our effective income tax rate is around 15%. Back in the 80s and 90s it was just a little less than 20%. You remember some years ago when multi-millionaire Mitt Romney ran for president he said he paid about 13% of his income in taxes.

"I think we need an effective tax rate that will get us out of this deficit mess. We need to follow your lead in The Colonies with a flat income tax and a value added tax. But we can't be at the 1 or 2% level like you are. We need a flat income tax with no deductions at around 15% and a value added tax on consumption at around 10%, maybe 15%. We can't keep making laws thinking only about our individual self centered desires and start thinking about the good of our society." (122)

 —"Last year taxes and Social Security payments for workers increased in 26 of the 34 OECD countries. The U.S. was one of the few to lower its tax burden, in spite of its high national debt.(123)

"You know Wreck, the OECD countries are taxing childless workers much more than those with children. This penalty for childless people certainly runs counter to your thinking."

 —"Certainly does. But I keep hoping that people will eventually recognize that we must reduce our population. Our species' evolutionary need for children has established a tradition that is probably stronger than our religious beliefs. But just like it took 40 or 50 years for the climate change deniers to recognize their errors, it will take much longer to overcome our personal expectations for parenthood and nearly as long for governments to see that they can't keep pushing for babies to pay for the retirements of their present day workers. I rather doubt that our politicians and priests will see the light before the population apocalypse ends civilization as we know it. My guess is that many of the rich will survive, but so many people will die painfully from famine, disease, floods and heat stroke. And it could have been prevented."

WHAT IS THE FUNCTION OF SOCIETY?

"That brings me to a fundamental question. What is the function of society? Is it to make all people equal with equal treatment in every area of life or is it to allow people to achieve to their highest levels as individuals? And how much should this be based on whether or not the people are actually equal or unequal?

"We put values on everything. Some of those values are monetary. Some are social. For example, achieving a high social status."

 —"But that high social status varies on what you value. It might be being the valedictorian of your graduating class or it might be being the leader of a violent street gang. These are quite different in terms of developing a 'just' society—a society that is peaceful and law abiding. But is that 'just' society one in which everyone is free to do what they want, even if it is harmful to them and to others—like losing oneself into the pleasant dreams of psychoactive drugs? Or must a 'just' society be one in which all or most are developing their potentials and moving society forward in ways that are practical and peaceful?"

 —"You are right, Wreck and Ray, there are so many variables in evaluating a society for its 'justness.' Should it be based on catering to the self-centered interests of the individuals in it? This might lead to anarchy. Should it be based on developing some utopian idea for society? But which idea should a society follow—the communistic ideals of Marx, the justification of a Hobbesian monarchy, a libertarian ideal such as we follow in The Colonies, a Platonic ideal of a stratified society based on talent? Or should we follow the ideas of Moses, Mohammed, Augustine or any of the other prophets of the God of Abraham—or the Hindu-Buddhist approach? Then, as I have mentioned, we have the more immediate concerns of whether to emphasize the equality or the inequality of people in the society. If we emphasize inequality we must allow people the liberty to achieve in whatever heights the laws will allow. And as I've said, if we are going to base a society on liberty or equality there should be an empirically valid reason for such a choice. If people are not actually equal, does society work better if they are treated equally? And if so, how much equality must the low end of the society have to keep them from revolting? Or is that a necessary question? Should we just be concerned about putting French fries in their bellies and enough sports on TV to keep them sedated?"

 —"It is certainly easier to keep people content today than it was in the 18th Century. The required taxes to the crown and tithes to the cardinals had a lot of people riled up."

 —"I wonder if America will ever get enough intelligent responsible people to make a truly 'just' society. From what I see you just want to work enough to be able to buy the toys you need for you and your family. Then if something happens to block your path to pleasure you find a lawyer and sue. Whatever it was, it was not your fault.

"You may remember a few years ago in your hometown of Los Angeles a 15-year-old girl died of an overdose of the drug Ecstasy at a 'rave' at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The event was to be for those 16 and older. Her parents went to court and sued the promoter and the Los Angeles Coliseum commission. They got $195,000 for her death. I wondered why the girl was not responsible when she knew the age requirements and the dangers of the drug. I wondered why her parents were not responsible for knowing where she was and supervising her actions. In America no one is ever responsible for the problems they create for themselves. It is up to the lawyers to show that people responsible for their problems were powerless to prevent them."

 "I have to agree. We have too many law schools turning out too many lawyers. When they can't get jobs in major firms suing big businesses, they chase ambulances looking for personal injury cases, find rare physician or pharmaceutical oversights and sue their insurance companies, or find businesses like cigarette companies who are actually damaging people. I agree with the last one, but I don't think that we should get 35 to 40% of the awards.

"How many lawyers, massage therapists, actors, athletes and psychologists does a society really need? We have so many people making money, or getting unemployment checks, for jobs that don't bring America money. We still have coal miners, lumberjacks, automakers, IT inventors and others who bring money into the country. But we have too many non-producers who share in that money. I think that a major qualification for a just society is that it pays its bills. The more equalitarian outcomes I want for the world shouldn't be paid for with I O Us."

 "Spoken like a true conservative. Welcome to the club! Certainly paying our way is an essential for a just society. We talked about honesty and responsibility as also being essential.

But the bribery and corruption worldwide certainly show that we are a long way from an honest utopia. We have talked so much about liberty or equality as being one of the societal directions we must choose. I'll go with liberty. Certainly from what I see people are unequal in every way."

 "You know my opinion. We can't have any kind of just societies as long as our world becomes increasingly overpopulated and parenting is allowed for people who aren't capable of loving. Until we do our best to guarantee every child capable and loving parents we are going to see more mass murderers, more terrorist bombings, and more prejudicial hate. As I see it a just society must be made up of people who are educated and psychologically mature—and we are not only a long way from that ideal but are decreasing our potentials as our population increases. When will people develop the will to be concerned with the future—rather than playing in the present. When will we be intelligent enough to be deeply concerned with justice?

FOOTNOTES

  1. OECD Report 2012, Michaela Rehle / Reuters

  2. Article 11

  3. See Book 4

  4. See Book 8 on Politics

  5. Levitt, Steven and Dubner, Stephen. Freakonomics. NY: Wm. Morrow, 2006, Ch. 4, P. 127

  6. Abortion chapter in Book 4 of this series

  7. Paragraph 229

  8. Paragraph 230

  9. Paragraph 231

  10. Exodus 21:24

  11. Economist, June 16, 2012. p. 9

  12. Calder v. Bull, 1798

  13. Eng, James. Catholic Nuns Group Stunned by Vatican scolding for "Radical Feminist" Ideas. MSNBC, Reuters April 21, 2012

  14. Book 4 "Our Human Values

  15. Forbes, Apr. 22, 2012

  16.  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AmericanFamily/story?id=124886&page=2#

  17. UNICEF, Common Dreams. May 30, 2012

  18. See Book 6

  19. See Book 8

  20. Book 6

  21. Book 6

  22. Johnston, Ian. MSNBC, June 20, 2012

  23. Proverbs 22:2; see also: Genesis 1:1, Deuteronomy 15:1; 2; 25:7,8; Isaiah 56: 5-7

  24. Charner, Perry. "Equality", The American People's Encyclopedia. VIII, pp. 8-58

  25. Ibid. See also: Robert Mur. The History of Political Science. NY: Appleton, 1926, p. 2

  26. See Book 6

  27. See Book 6

  28. Books 5 and 3

  29. The Economist, May 19, 2012. p. 34

  30. Theory of Justice 100, rev edit 87

  31. See Book 4

  32. Friedman, Thomas, Mandelbaum, Michael. That Used to Be Us. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: NY. 2011. p. 231

  33. Book 4

  34. See Book 6

  35. OECD, Report of the Working Group on Bribery, Jan. 11, 2012

  36. Pew Survey: Pubic Perceptions of conflict Between Rich and Poor (pewsocialtrends.org) January 12, 2012

  37. "Happiness tops in Denmark, lowest in Togo, study says." Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2012

  38. Book 4

  39. Book 6

  40. Foroohar, R. 'Berlus.i's Last Act.' Time Magazine, Nov. 21, 2011, p. 28

  41. See Book 9

  42. Rawls, J. Theory of Justice. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, 1999, Pp 46-47

  43. Luke 20:36

  44. Maritain, J. Ransoming the Time.. NY: Scribners, 1941. p 19

  45. Pope Pius X Motu Proprio, cited by Selden Delany "Equality and Authority" The Commonweal, 10:431, Sept. 11, 1929

  46. Aquinas. Summa Theologica I Q. 91, A. 4: see also Q. 95, A. 1, 2:Q. 75, A. 1

  47. Ibid. Q. 95, A. 4

  48. I, Q. 75, A. 3

  49. I, Q. 1, A. 7

  50. Brunner, Emil. Justice and the Social Order. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1945, p 9

  51. Ibid. pp 32-35

  52. Brunner, Emil. Christianity and Civilization. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948, p.117

  53. Brunner, E. Revelation and Reason. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. 1940, pp 55, 76; Man in Revolt. Phila: 1947, p. 65

  54. Brunner, E. The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption. Phila: Westminster Press, 1950, p. 57

  55. Brunner, E. Man in Revolt. Phila: Westminster Press, 1951, pp 155-163; Brunner, E. The Word and the World. London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1931 P. 120

  56. Lecky, William. History of European Morals. London: Green and Company, 1869.Vol I, p' 315

  57. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathon. Volume 25, Great Books of the Western World Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952: Chapter 2, p. 52; Chapter 4, pp 54–55; Chapter 5, p 59

  58. Rousseau, J J, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Vol. 38, Great Books of the Western World, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952. pp329-360

  59. Rousseau, The Social Contract. Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 38, pp387-439

  60. Rousseau. Origen of Inequality, op. cit. p. 334

  61. Rousseau. Social Contract. op. cit. p337-338

  62. Ibid. 338

  63. Rousseau. Origin of Inequality. Op. cit. p.335

  64. Rousseau. Social Contract, op. cit. 405

  65. Kant, I. Lectures on Ethics. NY: The Century Company, p 243

  66. Broad, C.D. Five Types of Ethical Theories.. London: Routledge, 1930. p. 117

  67. Kant, I. Metaphysic of Morals. Vol 42. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952. p. 348

  68. Engels, F. Barr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (Anti-Duhring) NY: International Publishers, 1939. P. 118

  69. Ibid. pp. 113-114

  70. Ibid.

  71. Dewey, J. A Common Faith. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1934, p. 43

  72. Ibid. p. 22

  73. Dewey, J. Characters and Events. NY: Henry Holt and Co. 1929, Vol. II, p. 854; 489

  74. Smith, TV. The American Philosophy of Equality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927. Pp 268-272

  75. Ibid. pp 255-258

  76. Ibid. p 273-274

  77. Smith, TV "The Ideological Strengths and Weaknesses of the American position." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Nov. 1951, p. 278

  78. Letter to Philamon

  79. 6:5-9: See also: Matthew 18:25, Colossians 4:1, 1 Timothy 6:1-3

  80. Tertullian, "On Women's Clothing", 1:1

  81. Phelips, The Churches and Modern Thought: p. 203

  82. Slavin, Robert. The Philosophical Basis for Individual Differences. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1956. pp. 24-26

  83. Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q 76, A. 5

  84. Ibid. Q. 85 A. 7: referring to Aristotle. Soul II, 9

  85. Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q 47, A 2

  86. Ibid. I, Q 47, A 2

  87. Brunner, Emil. Justice and the Social Order. NY: Harper and Brothers. 1945, p. 40

  88. Ibid. p. 41

  89. Brunner, E. Christianity and Civilization. NY: Charles Scribners, 1948, pp. 118-119

  90. See also: 23:5,70:30

  91. 24:34

  92. 4:24

  93. Nietzsche, F. Twilight of the Idols. NY: Viking, 1954. P. 552

  94. Nietzsche, F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the Philosophy of Nietzsche, NY: The Modern Library, p 113

  95. Nietzsche, F. The Geneology of Morals. From The Philosophy of Nietzsche. pp 29-30

  96. The foregoing discussion of equality is summarized and excerpted from the unpublished doctoral dissertation of Robert John O'Connor. A Comparison of Theistic with Non-theistic Bases for the Concept of Equality. University of Southern California, 1960

  97. On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History, 1840

  98. Book 4

  99. Book 8

  100. Book 4

  101. On the Geneology of Morals, Second Essay

  102. Book 4

  103. Book 6

  104. See Book 4

  105. December 7-11, 2011

  106. Berlin, I. (1958) "Two Concepts of Liberty." In Isaiah Berlin (1969) Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press

  107. See Book 8

  108. Book 8

  109. Smith TV The Democratic Way of Life. NY: New American Library, 1951, p 62

  110. Laski, Harold. Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays. NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1921, p. 57

  111. Laski, H. Authority in the Modern State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. P. 182

  112.  http://www.care2.com/causes/10-most-important-facts-about-the-koch-brothers.html#ixzz1rq7H56VV

  113. BBC, July 22, 2012

  114. Pew 'Social and Demographic Trends, January 2012

  115. 'The roles of globalisation, technological progress and regulatory reforms' from Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising. OECD. Dec 2011:www.oecd.org/els/social/inequality

  116. see Book 9

  117. The Independent, UK, July 23, 2012. p. 1

  118. Norton, MI and Ariel, D. "Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time." Perspectives on Psychological Science. June 9, 2011

  119. Dan Whitcolm, Reuters, Aug. 2, 2012

  120. See Book 9

  121. The Economist, June 9, 2012 page 27

  122. See Book 4

  123. Tax: the average tax burden on earnings in OECD countries continues to rise." OECD. May 25, 2012

