Equal, but Not Precious

By now, everybody’s seen the videos of school children singing praise songs to America’s Cool Black Friend. To all but the most sold-out hopeychange supporter, this has got to seem more than a little bit creepy. Whenever America borrows primary education ideas from North Korea, it gives one pause.

But something about this video bothered me a little more. Here’s the description of one particularly egregious verse from NRO’s Corner:

Obama/Jesus comparisons– “Red and yellow; black and white…they are equal in his sight.”  (Him being Obama).  These lyrics may sound familiar to Sunday school alumni.

The Sunday school song he refers to is “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” and the original lyric goes like this:

Red and yellow
Black and white
They are precious in His sight.

Leave aside the substitution of Obama for Jesus (just add it to the ever-thickening “What if Someone Had Tried That Under Bush?” file). Note how the word “precious” in the hymn has been replaced with “equal.” I think this speaks to a deeper problem than just the personality cult love-fest that is the Obama administration.

We’ve reached the point in our society where equality is the greatest moral good. That seems like a good idea on paper, until you realize that the easiest way for a government to make people equal is to make them all equally miserable. In fact, that’s the way it usually goes, from the French Revolution to the “People’s Republic” of China. Government efforts to unite the people in equality often end up uniting a whole bunch of them at room temperature, and the survivors never get the omelet that’s supposed to come from all those broken eggs.

As for me, I’ll take “precious” over “equal” any day, especially from my wife when she’s comparing me to the UPS guy or that dude from Twilight.  Anybody would rather be considered precious themselves, but in our interactions with others, we buy into the conventional wisdom of equality above all.  And I think the popular fetishization of equality comes from the fact that we’re starting to consider people less precious, not more.

If considering people precious makes you more like Jesus and considering them equal makes you more like Obama, I think I’ll stick with the old messiah over the new one, thank you very much.  Equal is easy–you can treat all your kids equally by sitting them in front of the TV and going about your business.  There, equal. Precious is hard; it demands action, because if you say something is precious but don’t act to make it distinct from everything else, then it’s not precious. It’s just average.

You can tell from Jesus’ actions that He thinks we’re precious. And I’ll give the kids credit for accuracy: you can tell from Obama’s actions that he thinks we’re … equal.