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What the Founders Meant by Equality
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11495 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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10 / 1986 |
2,423 Words |
| Author
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Roger Kaplan
Roger Kaplan is associate editor at Reader's Digest. |
I find it interesting, but not surprising, that Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora, in Egalitarian Envy, is sharp as a razor on a psychological problem - envy - with profound political and social consequences, but dull as a spoon on its application to American democracy. He has much to tell us about the role of envy in the human condition generally and its place in societies like his own. But I think he has seriously misunderstood the liberal tradition of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
De la Mora is a Spaniard, and, as he readily concedes, his is a nation in which the infection of envy has been deep and pervasive. It is a theme frequently encountered in Spanish literature; you have but to read one of twentieth-century Spain's greatest writers, Miguel de Unamuno (particularly his brilliant and somber masterpiece, the novel Abel Sanchez), to understand the rot de la Mora is referring to.
De la Mora makes an interesting observation about envy and economic development. Undoubtedly thinking of his own national experience, he posits that poor societies are conducive to envy than rich ones. It's good idea, but I think what he really wants to say is that static societies are going to produce more envious people than dynamic ones are. Now there is, of course, a certain correlation between dynamism and wealth. George Gilder has pointed out, for example, that Saudi Arabia, which is not, by the nature of its political institutions, an especially dynamic place, is not a wealthy place either. It is surely a rich place. But wealth, when you are talking about a society, is all in people. Switzerland and Singapore are not as richly endowed as many other parts of our earth; they are wealthy places, though, and their people are
... (1983 of 13900 Characters)
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