Liberty or Equality

I have, of late, become fascinated with trying to understand the American experiment in the context of my Indian upbringing. In this quest I have seen myself moving past the simplistic logic of people like Jon Stewart on the left and Bill O'Reilly on the right, and on to some real heavyweights of thought and logic. In this quite different plane lie people like Charles Krauthammer and Noam Chomsky. The former has a very high regard for the principles that America stands for and believes that the principles are honorable enough so as to deserve a kind of state proselytizing. This is the traditional logic and the beginning assumption of those who are identified as conservatives in this country. Chomsky, on the other hand, thinks that American exceptionalism is nothing but yet another ruse to keep people in line. In other words, he thinks that it's an efficient strategy of control and, therefore, there is nothing inherently honorable about it. Both agree at a very deep level, at the question of liberty which is enshrined in the American idea. Krauthammer seems to think that that idea of personal liberty gives America a special place under the Sun which is worth fighting for and Chomsky thinks that that idea of personal liberty is lost precisely when such an argument is made because it sets in motion systems which are much more powerful, much more omniscient than a puny individual. An individual is hopelessly deluded and lost within a machinery vastly more complicated than he can comprehend. Both have very good points and arguments and one can appreciate either side when one begins with the understanding that the fundamental axiomatic assumptions on either side of the debate are essentially arbitrary.

This line of thought led me to the question of liberty vs. equality, because these ideas are inherently at odds with each other. America was founded on the principle of liberty and equality was, in my opinion, added half-heartedly under the influence of Christianity. Still, the society here never seems to have taken equality very seriously and has, more or less, only ever paid lip service to the concept. With the decline of Christianity it appears that the sorry effort at trying to establish equality will also fade away because the arguments of equality from a non-religious point of view are very hard to justify. After all, why should people be equal if they were not created equal by a God? Equality, from a non-religious point of view, must necessarily take a subservient position to freedom. This is how it works in evolution and this is the inherent nature of human beings under evolution. Interestingly enough, while Christianity taught the equality of all people and this is how it affected the American experiment, Hindu philosophy taught the inequality of people through Manu-smriti and led to the establishment of the caste system. Under modern standards of behavior though, this centuries old set of principles is now being challenged. Indians are now being dragged, screaming and kicking, into contemporary expectations of modernity. What do I think? I think that the Hindu philosophy deserves credit for being so ruthlessly logical and for those who are immediately offended by this statement, I'd like to ask them to really think about where they derive their own justifications. I think liberty and inequality are the founding facts of life. These are principles which do not contradict each other and in fact are two sides of the same coin. But the society that they would give rise to would be an unpleasant one for all but the luckiest. This one sees in the Indian experiment and how incredible discrimination was dished out to so many for such a long time. Therefore, equality, as sort of an arbitrary principle and in an ad-hoc way, needs to be imposed on society for it to become reasonably pleasant. Indians are trying to do it and it is right and proper for them in the current age. However, there is a cost involved in this transformation and it should be kept in mind.