It is a great irony that the best protection from corrupt power inequality is subjection to the sovereignty of good over evil. When we recognize the root of evil as weakness, we no longer blame the fruits of evil on the strong.
Power inequality can be natural and beautiful. For example, a loving and just God having dominion over His creation, parents caring for children, business owners hiring new employees.
When is power inequality inappropriate? When it hurts innocent people, born or unborn. Injustice and tyranny occur when bad people use force or laws to abridge the natural rights and liberty of the individual. It’s that simple.
By this standard, every crime takes away some freedom of another, but crime implies lawbreaking. More atrocities have been committed within the law than outside of it. Holocausts need government’s blessing. According to R.J. Rummel, democide – murder by government – includes holocausts, genocides, political and religious persecution and mass killings. Democide kills more people than wars, plagues and natural disasters combined.
Here are the top four ennobling and beautiful power inequalities that improve the quality and dignity of lives all over the world.
1. God over man
Einstein’s famous E=mc2 proves that matter and energy are interchangeable. Atomic explosions show that energy is imbedded in matter and vice versa. Over a hundred years later, it is largely forgotten that E=mc2 debunks materialism. How? Matter and energy do not die but are only transfigured into each other. From their origin, no polarity exists between matter and energy. As Brian Koberlein put it, “Matter and energy are two sides of the same coin.” The indestructibility of matter proves the immortality of soul. The material world dying and energy within intelligent design waning are a superstition of atheists and anti-science charlatans. Materialism denies the eternal nature of God’s creation. See this article in Scientific American about how atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method.
Atheistic communism and democratic socialism are by definition anti-science because they push the fallacy of matter dying, no life after death, matter without spirit and ethics without God. When you deny a Creator, you deny God’s authority. When you deny God’s authority, you deny that morality comes from God. When you deny that morality comes from God, then morality is arbitrary and man-made. When this is believed, the state becomes a god, socialism a moral code and tyranny is inevitable. Tocqueville warned that socialism promotes “a depraved taste … to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.” Why does socialism fail? God’s intelligent design has ethics built into it. Conscience predates our form and birth. Every atom is a pulpit from which injustice is rebuked and contravened.
Virtue allows pleasure and happiness to coexist. God will not be mocked. Addiction turns pleasure into despair.
2. Parent over child
Whatever you are responsible for, endows you with authority over it. This is true for being a parent, a general during World War II, even walking a dog or house sitting. Responsibility engenders authority.
This is the tragedy of public-school officials providing abortion access to minors without parental consent or knowledge and liberal indoctrination of young children against the conscience and values of parents. This abuse of power allows parents to retain full responsibility for their children but strips mothers and fathers of parental authority – a clear overreach of statism over our natural rights. It is the spiritual equivalent of taxation without representation.
The welfare state is morally bankrupt because it bribes vulnerable single mothers to normalize broken homes and incentivizes them to have children out of wedlock and purge their homes of a father’s influence. From a child’s perspective, a fatherless home is a tragedy.
3. Spouse over spouse
The Bible tells us that Jesus obeyed the will of his Heavenly Father yet was equal in every way, including in power and divinity. Traffic signs command us to stop, to go, to yield, and no one imagines them to be our superior. Do we not obey a 16-year-old demanding that we wait behind a yellow line for the roller coaster? Dominance happens every moment of every day, in every area of life. When we voluntarily accept another’s authority or knowledge, it does not suggest inequality.
According to Marcus Buckingham, author of “Go Put Your Strengths to Work,” advances in neuroscience and brain development prove that by 5 years old, a superhighway of talent emerges in one area to the exclusion of other skills. Therefore, it is more productive to “build on your strengths and manage around your weaknesses.” What is called inequality in marriage is often a divergence of talents.
Is specialization of labor inherently unfair? Imagine a squirrel marries a dolphin. Would you say one is better at gathering acorns or catching fish? The beauty of honoring a partner’s strengths becomes clear and humane. Let the person with natural talents in an area take charge of it. Defer to another’s strengths, expertise or stronger desire so long as they are not aggressive or belittling.
What about drudgery? Drudgery is a team sport because gender is irrelevant here. Why? As Buckingham explains, if something saps your strength, even if you’re good at it, it is a weakness.
4. Capitalism over democratic socialism
Capitalism prevents slavery by allowing labor to benefit the one who toils. Mutually beneficial transactions allow wealth to be earned without using force, creates wealth without imposing socialism or imperialism. Freedom creates wealth.
Socialism depletes wealth. Socialism reaps but cannot sow, cuts down a forest, but cannot plant one. Socialism proves that dependency cannot grow and poverty decrease at the same time. A welfare state is not compassionate, because it requires force. Nothing is so beautiful that force cannot uglify it. Add force to beautiful work and sex, and they become slavery and rape. Socialism proves that even charity cannot dignify force.
Why is income inequality in free markets so beautiful? Because it is generated by choosing good products, customer service and a convenient distribution model.
