Meritocracy vs. egalitarianism

It's worth considering how differently our Revolution turned out from the one that erupted a few years later in France. Last I checked, no heads rolled from guillotines in Philadelphia, and despite the troubled years before the Constitution there's no period known as the American Reign of Terror. For such contemporaneous events, the French and American experiments certainly produced different results.

Part of this, ironically, was due to attitudes held by the Founders that today are derided as elitist. Even before the storming of the Bastille, American statesmen wrote of their fear of mob rule--the anarchy of unbridled passion. Indeed, one of their own number, Sam Adams, was regarded as an expert agitator--and held in some measure of suspicion because of it. His Sons of Liberty organization did much to light the fuse to the American Revolution, but even his own brother, John Adams, reigned him in on occasion.

This more temperate approach to revolutionary change was also reflected in their aims. While the Americans certainly didn't copy British government wholesale, much of what they did was intended to protect the parts of that society worth perpetuating. Rather than tear down all existing structure, they sought to preserve the best and adjust the rest. All in all, it was a very conservative revolution.

Revolutionary France, however, was a case of throwing out even the baby with the bathwater. Here, men were not just deemed to be "endowed with inalienable rights;" no, they must BE equal in every respect: socially, materially and politically. The Revolutionary Citizen was the forerunner of nothing less than the New Soviet Man, whose cry of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" degenerated into a bloody mockery of itself, eventually producing a society far less egalitarian than the one emerging on the western side of the Atlantic. Napoleon became a fitting name indeed for the pig in George Orwell's classic novel Animal Farm.

Our society, like every other, remains imperfect. It has, however, carried seeds of self-correction since the beginning, and there are still few other countries in the world today where a focus on one's talent and a willingness to work can better pay dividends. Those who see racism everywhere they look fail to explain those who escape the ghettos with determination, while taunted by those who stay behind. It fails to explain the high school or college dropouts who nevertheless amass large fortunes doing the things they love and are talented at.

Any regular reader of this blog knows I believe our society is headed in the wrong direction. But that doesn't prevent me from acknowledging what we've achieved and continue to accomplish. While the classic school line that "any kid can grow up to be President" isn't quite as true as one would like to believe, those kids still have lots of options in the Land of the (still kinda) free and home of the (ocassionally) brave.

Here's to the 231st year of the Republic!