Jordan Peterson is right – inequality does not always imply discrimination

Jun 3, 2018 by

By Marian L. Tupy, CapX:

By now, millions of people in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world have watched the Channel 4 News exchange between British journalist Cathy Newman and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. It has been the subject of countless online comments; hundreds of articles have been written analysing both Newman’s and Peterson’s performance. At the root of the disagreement between the two was the notion of equality of outcome.

Where does it come from and what, if anything, should be done about it? To start with, it is important to note how extraordinary it is that we are having this kind of conversation in the first place. For millennia, nobody thought that equality – in any sense of the word – was conceivable or even desirable. The strict stratification of our society into slaves, peasants, nobility and priests, people believed, was pre-ordained and vertical mobility impossible. A son born to a blacksmith would take over his father’s business and pass on that enterprise down to his son.

That this sort of stasis could go on for many generations is attested by the rise of “professional” last names, such as Smith, Potter, Cooper, Mason, Tyler and so on. Thus John, the son of Peter the Smith, became John Smith, etc. Today, last names are commonly passed down the male line, because men were the primary breadwinners and “business owners” in the days of yore.

It was not until the Age of the Enlightenment that privilege in its original sense of the word (i.e., a certain entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis) came under scrutiny. As Western European economies expanded, the bourgeoisie grew richer. The wealth of the nouveau riche, in turn, became an important source of tax revenue for the warring monarchies. Naturally, the bourgeoisie resented its new “duties,” while the aristocrats, exempted from most taxation, enjoyed disproportionate political power and extra-legal rights.

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Read also: Three Cheers for Inequality by Fr John Perricone, Crisis Magazine

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