Note: This is a rant and is meant in no way, shape or form to end any discussions about anything. These rants are meant to start discussion and (hopefully) open some minds to new ideas. Also, these rants are written by fairly seasoned pompous asshole who will not respond to comments or questions. Now here’s Tom with the weather.

Western democracies have a great ability for deception. They are built on the promise of freedom, liberty and equality. I could argue that all three do not fully exist but the one that suffers the most and so few people talk about is equality. Now you could ask any person is a democratic country if they believe in equality and for the most post they will say yes. I’m not going to dispute the fact that they believe in the concept of equality but the problem is that they don’t care about it.

Historically, democracy and equality has not come hand in hand despite the fact the concept of democracy is based in part on the equality of all people (one person, one vote). Almost all western democracies have histories of slavery, imperialism, colonialism and oppression. So while countries wrote constitutions and charters promising rights and freedoms for all they had laws that instilled oppression and inequality for others. In a lot of cases, this has been corrected; slavery doesn’t exist in western democracies anymore and african countries are now autonomous. So most of the laws have been changed and yet equality is still a dream that has not been reached.

Fast forward to many years after the abolishment of slavery, around the time African imperialism ended and you see the Civil Rights Movement and the last wave of feminism. Both of these movements pushed for more equality and achieved that goal; rights for African-Americans have vastly improved and so have women’s rights yet still no equality. More decades have passed and equality is still a dream, a vague apparition of the future…why?

The answer is that we, as a society, don’t care about equality. We almost all believe in it but we don’t do anything to obtain in. Some Scandanavian countries have closed the gap between the rich and the poor and countries like South Africa have parity in terms of the sexes in the elected governments but most countries, especially those with the worst records of equality, are still no where near equality. No elections are fought on aboriginal rights or quotas for gender parity in parliament, senate or congress. Parties campaign on taxes and security, not equality. We all say we believe but its obvious from all this that we just don’t care.