“Of course, all men are created equal. But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement.”
So said University of Austin President Carlos Carvalho during a convocation address Aug. 31 to kick off the fall semester titled “In Defense of Inequality.”
UATX is a four-year-old university in Texas that aims to offer unadulterated freedom of speech and expression and academic inquiry.
Here is the first portion of his speech:
Tonight, as we gather on the threshold of America’s 250th anniversary, I want to share why this moment and UATX represent something essential about the American experiment.
Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, King George III formally declared Americans to be rebels and traitors. This dashed the colonists’ hopes for a peaceful reconciliation. And set the path to declare a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal.
But on the heels of America’s quarter-millennium since the Declaration of Independence, I want to do something a bit unfashionable: I want to defend inequality.
Of course, all men are created equal. But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement.
I want to defend this kind of inequality because I believe it is the most important way that UATX distinguishes itself. And because being honest about inequality is the most important way that UATX can help you be extraordinary.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great 19th century critic of American democracy, noticed that the passion for equality dominates every American institution. He admired this democratic spirit, but he also issued a warning.
Tocqueville warned that the concept of equality is the most powerful compulsion in the American mind. A dominating drive for equality suffocates the very people whose uncommon talent, courage, and vision could pull everyone else upward.
Without those rare sparks of excellence, there are no breakthroughs. No bold leaders. No innovations. No radical thought that disrupts the human tendency toward lazy conformity.
Tocqueville famously observed that people in democracies might come to prefer equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. In the name of making all things equal, we end up equal only in mediocrity.
And that is the surest path to slavishly submitting to authority, submitting to bad ideas, submitting to an overbearing government, and submitting to the soft tyranny of low expectations.
Equality, without excellence, is the surest path to national decline.
A free society, to remain dynamic and free, must enable those gifts to develop rather than force them into a common mold. So even in a republic of equals, we need small sanctuaries of aristocracy and excellence to ensure the success of liberty. Democracy runs on equality; freedom and excellence run on inequality.
