Do you want real fairness?
By Theresa Camoriano
President Obama says he wants fairness. He suggests that anyone who disagrees with him or opposes him wants unfairness. And a lot of people simply react emotionally to that nice-sounding word and support him on that basis. After all, they want fairness, too!
It is very convenient to use a word like “fairness”, which has no clear, widely-accepted definition in terms of policy, because each person will define the word in his own way and will attribute his concept of fairness to the President. What a wonderful man! He wants to treat everyone exactly the way I think they should be treated!
However, since everyone has a different idea of what fairness means, the President cannot possibly carry out everyone’s idea of fairness.
If we want to be responsible, intelligent citizens, we need to look past the nice-sounding word and ask what the President means by fairness and what policies he intends to promote in pursuit of his concept of fairness.
It is clear from the policies he has pursued so far that his idea of fairness is to use the government to benefit the people he likes and punish the people he dislikes.
So, for example, he thinks it is fair to take from hard-working nurses and waitresses and fast food workers in order to give to “green” corporations and Wall Street bankers who are his friends. He thinks it is fair to take from people’s pension funds and give to unions who have supported him. He thinks it is fair to apply one set of health insurance laws to most Americans but to provide waivers to his friends. He thinks it is fair to ask whether a person looks like his son, or whether a person has donated to his campaign or belongs to a politically well-connected group before he decides how the government should treat that person, and he appoints judges who take the same approach. (Remember Sotomayor’s comments about the wise Hispanic woman?)
That is not fairness by any reasonable definition of the term. In fact, that is just the opposite of fairness. Real fairness means treating every person equally under the law, regardless of whether you like the person or not.
It is extremely unfair for the government to favor one person over another based on how that person looks or whether that person belongs to a group the President favors or whether that person has contributed to the President’s campaign.
“Lady justice” is depicted as wearing a blindfold because she is supposed to be impartial. But President Obama would have “lady justice” peeking over the blindfold and checking out who the person is before deciding how to apply the law — just the opposite of what fairness and justice are supposed to be.
Because lady justice has essentially been impartial in the United States, people have been able to focus their energy and resources on being useful and productive, instead of having to spend them trying to get on the good side of those who hold the power of government.
That is how we became the most powerful, prosperous country in the world, producing enough to lift ourselves out of poverty and to give others a helping hand as well. That is how we have been a successful melting pot, with people coming from all parts of the world and all backgrounds to live peacefully together as Americans — by respecting the life, liberty and property of every person and treating every person equally under the law.
President Obama seeks to transform America from a land in which every person enjoys equal protection under the law to a land where the government favors some at the expense of others, and he is trying to hide what he is doing by calling it “fairness”. An honest person might want to call it corruption, crony capitalism, tyranny, or thuggery, but they would never call it fairness.
The President may talk a lot about fairness, and we all like the idea of fairness, but anyone who is looking beyond the nice-sounding words to the substance of his policies knows that he is promoting the use of government to favor some at the expense of others, which is certainly not fairness by any reasonable definition of the term. If you want real fairness, then you will be sure to vote and get your friends to vote for people who will support equal protection under law, which is the only real policy of fairness.
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