Are There Real Differences Within the Principle of Equality

¶ … Equality When it comes to the principle of equality -- which in this time of political change, of ongoing violence perpetrated by Islamic radicalism, and the uncertainty of what climate change will bring to the people of the earth -- it is simply a concept that has appeal in a philosophical context. On Saturday June 11, a terrorist entered a nightclub in Florida with an assault rifle and murdered about 50 people. There was no equality in that instance, there was only blatant power being brought to bear against innocents.

Likewise, there is no across the board equality in the United States when 1% or 2% of the citizens hold the majority of financial and political power -- and the remaining 98% of the population struggles to rise above poverty and millions of families live on the edge -- check-to-check. Meanwhile it is the position of this paper that the principle of equality is a lovely and lofty idea -- and likely this idea has come to fruition in some societies around the globe.

However, even though people should be treated similarly and equality, across the board, the idea is more of a goal and a dream rather than a working principle. And it should be observed that there are real differences in the principle of equality, not just scholars and others asserting / surmising that those differences exist without proof and evidence.

Equality and Equality of Treatment (three well-supported reasons) Research: The conservative website called (conservapedia.com) points out that people who commit the same crime under the same circumstances -- part of the definition of the principle of equality -- should be "punished in the same way" (www.conservapedia). But of course this is not true; people are not treated equally based on the commission of the same crime.

Why, for example, is Brock Turner, former standout swimmer at Stanford University from a wealthy family, given just 6 months in prison for raping a coed on campus? Why did Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky decide give Turner such a light sentence? The answers to those questions are not what's important here, but rather the fact that one judge in California can give a light sentence to a violent rapist in one situation, but another judge in Wisconsin could follow his state's statutes and give the felon up to 60 years in prison.

Research shows that across the United States (including in California, where Turner should have received at least 6 years but instead will be out in 3 months assuming good behavior) there are very still penalties for sexual assault cases. Logic: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) discusses the "presumption of equality," which the SEP describes as a "formal, procedural principal of construction located on a higher formal and argumentative level" (SEP).

The presumption in favor of the concept of equality is often justified based on the idea of "equal respect" linked to the requirement of "universal and reciprocal justification" (SEP).

Moreover, the rock-bottom justification for the presumption of equality is based on the "principle of equal distribution for all goods politically suited for the public distribution." This means that political justice has a logic that every member of any community -- when part of a collective body -- must make a decision based on the "fair distribution of social goods" and based on "equal distribution for all distributable goods" (SEP). Those "distributable goods" would certainly, logically include drinking water in any community.

In Flint, Michigan, there was an assumption that the distribution of drinking water (distributable goods) would be fair, would be an example of the presumption of equality, but in fact as the news media has been pointing out for months dangerous amounts of lead in the drinking water has sickened many residents of Flint.

"Universally acceptable reasons" for assuming fairness include "equal respect" which citizens "owe to each other" and moreover, only the rules of equal respect and the presumption of equality are considered legitimate, the SEP explains, when all citizens can agree to "commonly shared reasons." Reason: It is reasonable to believe that if equal distribution of goods and the principles of equality are to be recognized as universal truths, then it is also reasonable to believe that anyone who claims they are owed more, " ..

owes all others an adequate universal and reciprocal justification" for that claim (SEP). On the subject of equality, is it reasonable for the United Kingdom to place female immigration detainees in the same holding cells as male immigration detainees? Ali McGinley writes in the Forced Migration Review that "women [immigrants] face heightened vulnerability and risk" in any event. But when locked up with men in immigration detention facilities, their vulnerability and risk become " .. intensified significantly in places of deprivation of liberty" (McGinley, 2013). Objections to my Argument A writer named H.

Bedau takes issue with the principle of equality. He says the "current obsession with equality" is "deplorable" (Bedau, 1971). Of course he wrote this essay many years ago, when there was far less interest in equality than there is now. But he goes on to say that there are far more problems of "conscience" that occupy.