In praise of DISPARATE IMPACT
The American Constitution enshrines the INDIVIDUL above the STATE, ABOVE the COLLECTIVE/community.
It does this by severely limiting government action and involvement in the day-to-day affairs of its free citizens and by barring government control over any portion of the economy and enshrining private property rights.
Private property rights and individualism combine to make the equalization of people impossible, as they codify a severe and draconian “disparate impact” into what is defined as “individual Liberty.”
Under that system, the clever put the yolk on both the brilliant and the poor (who wind up doing the bulk of all the back-breaking work). The “clever” are generally not the most intellectually gifted and certainly NOT the often mocked, “effete, educated elite,” as educational achievement and intelligence are not consistently correlative. The “clever” are often derided as “the investor class,” or “the entrepreneurial class,” as they are, in fact the investors, speculators and entrepreneurs who create profitable concerns from their own thoughts. The “clever” are generally the most gifted in common sense, ironically enough, an area in which the many of the “intellectually gifted” are not.
Under individual Liberty, “the clever,” who number at most perhaps 15 – 20 percent of the population, at most, come to completely dominate it. And while there is no greater “disparate impact” than that, there is also nothing that increases human achievement and progress more than that, either.
Moreover, “disparate impact” (differing outcomes based on factors like abilities, ambitions, ruthlessness and cunning that often translate into differences between various economic classes and ethnic groups) is not only “right and just,” but “Constitutional,” as it is codified into the original American Constitution in the name of property rights.
The vicious free-for-all of the open/free market, private property rights and INDIVIDUALISM works in that it creates the MOST prosperity for the MOST people.
The best that can be said for any form of COLLECTIVISM is that “despite producing less prosperity and a (“slightly” to “significantly”) lower overall standard of living (depending on your viewpoint) it also greatly reduces the innate disparate impact that individualism allows and enables the government to do more to equalize people economically.” When all is said and done, that amounts to virtually no argument at all, as it concedes at the start that INDIVIDUALISM and economic freedom produce MORE prosperity for MORE people.
The American Constitution that codified private property rights, individualism and economic freedom as the structural essence of the USA was at least the 5,000 year leap in the advancement of man that W. Cleon Skousen said it was.
Those who view this document, a document that “enshrines a socially Darwinist “disparate impact” based on guile over intellect and refinement,” as flawed believe that simply because they fail to understand that freedom is innately unequal and that common sense is far more valuable, at least in terms of human advancement than mere genius.
Liberty is the full weight of personal responsibility. It is not an easy path. It’s not even a “fair path.” It does not limit the natural inequities of man, it accepts them as natural and reinforces them. It is not neat and clean, but it is prosperous. It is not kind and tolerant, but it is prosperous. It is not stagnant, static and more equal, but it is powerfully dynamic, coldly opportunistic and nakedly prosperous.
In short, it is not only the best system in terms of advancing mankind and increasing prosperity ever advanced, it is a system so far advanced that its contemporary critics do not even understand it well enough to make an informed critique.