<i> Liberte, Egalite,</i> Yes; but What of <i> Fraternite</i> ? : Values: We understand liberty and equality, but unless we see one another as brothers and sisters, we can’t be truly free.
The final word of the battle cry of the French Revolution has always rung strange to me. It does to most Americans, I think. We understand “Liberty and Equality,” but what is this Fraternite? Why would revolutionaries value it as something to be fought for with the same passion as liberty and equality?
“Give me liberty, or give me death.” We understand that. The greatest wartime loss of American life was to hold together a Union threatened by the social and economic effects of slavery. We value liberty. We will die for it.
We also understand “equality,” which is not synonymous with “liberty.” The Emancipation Proclamation did not create equality. Wage disparity for similar work and the preponderance of women, children and minorities in poverty means that millions still are not equal. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death illuminated 200 years of history. Some will die for equality, for we are not truly free unless we are equal, but we are not equal until we freely see one another fraternally, as brothers and sisters.
We know that freedom and equality can be in conflict. For instance, in recent weeks a rally was held on the steps of the state Capitol. Its publicized purpose was to defend the rights of the family and family life. Its real intent was to defeat the passage of a bill that would extend freedom from discrimination in employment and housing to gay people. Discrimination against homosexuals is undeniable. Men of God lobby and inflame to keep the state from mandating equality and freedom for these men and women.
Inside the Capitol, elected officials wrestle to balance the state budget. Among their options are cuts in aid to families with dependent children and in programs for the homeless. Recent studies show that the median rental cost for a two-bedroom apartment in the state’s most populous counties already exceeds the total of monthly financial aid available to a single parent with three children. Assistance is to be cut further, creating more homelessness, while programs for the homeless are being cut as well.
Homeless and poor families cannot provide the essentials of life for their children. Nearly one of every five children in the country was poor in 1989. The rate was about twice as high for minority children. They are malnourished in their mothers’ wombs. They go to bed hungry in substandard housing, if they have that. Their health suffers. School suffers. Promise withers. Prison looms.
Though equally endowed with life, all do not have equal access to the means to preserve it. In both of these situations, the state must decide whether or not to proclaim explicitly, “All are not equal. There is no social obligation to act as if they were.”
At this point the haunting, final word of the French call to revolution bothers, almost indicts us. Fraternite . We wish to be free. We desire equality. We can have neither fully until we recognize that we are brothers and sisters. For the melancholy fact is that only one person on Earth is fastest, one is strongest, one is most intelligent, one is richest. The rest of us are not their equals in an objective order. The human mind and heart alone can acknowledge us as equal. Until that happens, no one can savor freedom and equality. The weak will be victimized by the more powerful or privileged. The most powerful by definition are not equal, and they cannot enjoy freedom, because their status, like life, is transient and perilous. They must live in fear of the one who will emerge more powerful, or of the many who may grow restive.
Familial honor for other human beings cannot be legislated. It is an attitude of the human heart, that sanctuary wherein no one makes law except its ruler. Society’s laws may say that minorities and women, homosexuals and children are free and equal. No one can make me feel that way about them. Only when I choose to honor them as my brothers and sisters will I treat them as free and equal. When we recognize that this bond is as important as Liberty and Equality we will realize the promise of our own revolution. Failing that, we pursue a hopeless quest to reconcile freedom and equality in an objectively unequal world.
In the fire and chaos of revolution, Fraternite, the frail choice of the human heart to honor the human person, was seen as the bedrock on which to build democracy. It was not a slogan or the distillation of an intellectual or visionary. Those who gave it voice died for the idea.
Our clay is drawn from a common quarry, shaped by the same inexorable laws. Our life comes from the same source. We share this exquisite planet for such a short time. Too soon our bodies, the dust of stars, return to their source. With this wisdom, we, as members of the human family, can resolve the family’s discord.