Equal does not mean same

"The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens." -A. de Tocqueville. When he was just 25 years of age, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America from France. He came here under the pretense that he was to observe the penal system. In reality, he had to escape France. He had ticked off the powers that be and that was a dangerous place to be in nineteenth century France. I must admit that Tocqueville has always been a romantic figure for me. Partially because of what he wrote and his exquisite power of observation, but it is mostly due to who he was and where he came from. In my mind, if he had not been able to escape France, he would have been one of those heroic figures on the barricade that Hugo describes so powerfully in "Les Miserables" for his political leanings would have been in line with those rebels. But escape he did and he and a buddy took a field trip to America. They did take a perfunctory look at our penal system but they observed the life in post Revolutionary War America much more closely and he came away with some powerful insight on what caused America to succeed in a revolution when France failed and why he thought that America would continue to prosper. One of the most powerful things that he came away with was his understanding of equality. He once wrote, "Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will supply you with a republic." He also stated, "It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too." These are complimentary, not contradictory statements. America was and still should be an honorable republic and Tocqueville knew it and he also predicted the loss of such a treasure. You see, he defined equality as having equal value. To his view the American woman had far more equality than had ever been enjoyed by women before and felt that they would only continue to grow if we retained that sense of equal value. But he warned us in the second statement that I quoted to begin this paragraph that if we try to make equal mean the same rather than of equal value then honor would vanish and so would a republic. In the first quotation he is referencing the mindset that he saw in America where each son was of equal value to a family and each son could receive an equal opportunity and inheritance. He did not say that each son must be exactly the same, that he saw as a problem that would destroy honor. His definition of equality is powerful and empowering and allows for the most freedom possible. You see, Tocqueville understood what would be our biggest downfall as Americans, thus the statement, "Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom." He could see that we were already moving towards viewing equality incorrectly. Tocqueville warned us about the dangers of equating equal to sameness. And his warnings were justified. We reached a point in our society when women and then others began to demand sameness rather than equal value. Our society has been working towards sameness ever since and now honor has vanished. We are eliminating the very thing that made us great. We are selling out our value to be the same and I can think of no greater tragedy. Think about what I have written here. Think about your value and your dissimilarities and inequalities that make you something worth honoring. And then fight for THAT, not to be the same.