Egalitarian Commitment

Abstract

Egalitarian Commitment. Equality, social justice, freedom, having positive relations with others regardless of social status, social acceptance, being part of a community, participating.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

–Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness

The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent the cultural process developed in it will succeed in mastering the derangements of communal life caused by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction … . Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man.

–Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

–Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence