Key Fact

In the American tradition, we believe that the aim of society is not an absolute equality of result but rather an equality of opportunity and the freedom to either succeed or fail on one’s own merits. The notion of seeking rather than mandating fairness as a universal concept among the population would encourage that all citizens had at least some modicum of goods and services, security, prosperity, and property necessary for survival. But there was no desire to force everybody to become the same, because that equality of result would require, as we learned in the 20th century from various aspects of communism and socialism, a degree of government coercion, one that would be absolutely dangerous to both liberty and freedom.