It is precisely over what constitutes equity and justice that disputes arise, because human existence is so complex and filled with ambiguities and contradictions, in which unintended consequences are the rule rather than the exception, and in which agreement even over what is most desirable is never universal.
Slogans such as this are not intended, of course, to express any truth, moral or empirical: They are intended to extend the power of those who devise them and persuade others to intone them as if they were indubitable.
If the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, the price of equity, as defined by those who equate fairness with equality of outcome between arbitrarily chosen categories of people which are potentially even more numerous than the number of genders according to the most gender-expansive of ideologues , is endless surveillance, form-filling, denunciation, mistrust, confession of sin, ideological legerdemain, self-righteous indignation, bullying, resentment, and intellectual dishonestyβamong other things.
When the history of our times comes to be written, I hope that our descendants will marvel at our collective madness. This assumes, of course, that the madness will have passed; though if it has, it will almost certainly have been replaced by collective madness of another kind. Among other things, these two: first, the genuine mental and physical well-being of disturbed, vulnerable young people; and second, the freedom of sceptics to give lawful expression to important and reasonable doubts, without suffering damage to their careers at the hands of noisy, aggressive activists who want to stop us thinking, lest we see the truth.
People who really care to correct unjust economic and social disadvantages are eager to understand the causes correctly, since accurate diagnosis is requisite for effective remedy.
