2003 Fair is Fair – Not Necessarily
8“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ 9“When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. 10“When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11“When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, 12saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ 13“But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14‘Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. 15‘Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ 16“So the last shall be first, and the first last.” [Matthew 20:8-16 Jesus’ Parable of the Laborers]
“What’s fair is fair” – well, not necessarily. It should be glaringly obvious that, especially in matters of public policy and cultural norms, “fair” is a useful moving target, sometimes intentionally. [Matthew 20:8-16 Jesus’ parable of the laborers]
A good example of manipulating a just cause into a maladjusted fairness weapon is the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Act). Christopher Caldwell exposed the unintended consequences of the Act in a lecture at Hillsdale College recently (“The Roots of Our Partisan Divide”). His subject was not fairness, but his analysis exposed its abuse in different terms. Caldwell’s list of infamous consequences from the Act is a mirror reflection of violated civil rights championed by the aggrieved and imposed on the majority under the claims of fairness; racial quotas, illegal immigrant rights, and intersectionality – awarding the value of one’s opinion based on the length of their list of perceived abuses.
Oddly enough, even the concept of freedom has fallen prey to fairness doctrine. The contemporary idea of freedom is too often distorted into the idea that if a person’s claims or behaviors fit their picture of fairness, their actions or preferences, are justified, regardless of the consequences for someone else’s freedoms.
In his 1958 essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty”, Isaiah Berlin wrote about the idea of a negative liberty and positive one. He suggested, rightly, that believing liberty to be freedom from interference is a destructive, enslaving, negative liberty. As St. Augustine put it, “The good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that, not of one man, but…of as many masters as he has vices”.
That is what fairness doctrine can lead to, negative liberty. All one has to do according to that belief, is scream “unfair” like a petulant child and both the commoner and the mighty cower. That may win the day, but in the long run, the cultural and legal consequences result in a society increasingly indentured to an ever-increasing cadre of bureaucratic overlords and a voluminous body of restrictions both to public and private liberties.
Fairness is not necessarily equality. In modern culture, it is more like egalitarianism; the idea that the complainant deserves the same profits or position or rights as their target, no matter how they have managed their resources or educated and trained themselves or if the rights they are trying to claim are inappropriate to circumstances, unjustified by facts, or destructive of others’ natural rights.
Fair can be fair, but only if it is married to personal responsibility and not the product of self-centeredness or blind allegiance to sameness of outcomes. False fairness is the mantra of “the rich paying their fair share” or transgenders demanding equal access to all things of the opposite sex – “I feel like I am a—–, therefore it’s only fair.”
“Fairness” is also not necessarily righteousness. Fairness doctrine claims that fair makes right instead of the right defining what is fair. It is an important distinction. Righteousness is built on the idea that moral standards exist which are universally, if not at least culturally, recognized. Frankly, life in a fallen world is predictably unfair. Fairness doctrine claims its own moral superiority.
Without being bound to an outside standard of rights and wrongs, fairness reacts to personal prejudices, desires, hurts, or the shifting sands of culture. Morality degenerates into situational contradictions and chaos. Claims that the Electoral College unfairly put President Trump in office is the true basis behind the national liberal push to either abolish it or find ways to go around it. It is claimed that because a slight majority, proportionally speaking, voted one way but the Electoral College overwhelmingly went the other way, the election was unfair. But righteousness honors law. Genuine fairness would declare “good, the Constitution I love worked” and cheating didn’t deprive me of my voice.
“Fairness” is not always justice either. In many minds, for example, Chicago’s well-documented crime problem should be addressed fairly; when translated means the same amount of resources, time, and enforcement operations across the entire city. In that scenario, the idea of marshaling those things against a certain neighborhood or racially dominant gang area is anathema. Hands off!
Justice demands a different approach. It requires four things: impartiality of application, proportional response, conformity to an objective standard (e.g. law), and giving to the person or persons what they are properly due, not what they or anyone else believes is fair (“Social Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel”). Fairness rooted in justice would concentrate Chicago’s law enforcement efforts where the problems are the worst. If the arrests are substantially higher in the inner city or racially concentrated areas, the innocents in those areas will finally have justice. If the crime moves to affluent white areas, so does law enforcement.
The Bible addresses genuine fairness grounded in freedom, righteousness, and justice. Jesus did so through His parables of the laborers (Mt 20) and the ten virgins (Mt 25). For Him, applying the ultimate standards of the kingdom of Heaven itself was not about equal outcomes or some kind of distorted independent “fairness”, but fairness of justice and righteousness defined by Divine standards. He continued to speak through the apostles (Col 4:1) as He had throughout the Old Testament.
The next time you hear someone (Left or Right) whether a politician, activist, or even in the church, claim fairness as an ultimate justification, remember – it means nothing unless the claim takes a back seat to objective, verifiable justice and righteousness.