Fox News guest claims the Confederacy was “built on a similar kind of critical race theory and equity”
Heritage Foundation’s Allen Guelzo: “Modern tyrannies have been founded on glorifications of equity and will and power”
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From the May 14, 2021, edition of Fox News’ The Story with Martha MacCallum
MARTHA MACCALLUM (ANCHOR): So, I want to put something up on the screen. This is put out today by the American Medical Association, as they — as so many institutions are doing right now, tried to come up with an equity paper or plan, I think it's about 90 pages long. And in it, this is the American Medical Association, and it says, “Seeking to treat everyone the ‘same’ ignores the historical legacy of disinvestment and deprivation through historical policy and practice of marginalizing and minoritizing communities.” What do you think about that, Professor?
ALLEN GUELZO (PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR, HERITAGE FOUNDATION VISITING SCHOLAR): Well, I think it points in two dangerous directions. One is that the American founding was based upon equality — not equity, those are two very different things. It was based, I think in the largest sense, on reason itself — on natural law, on logical propositions like you find in the Declaration of Independence, or the Gettysburg Address. And the Constitution itself is a written, logical document, built on rules of law and evidence and due process.
There have been Americans who have resisted this. The American Confederacy, for instance, the Southern Confederacy, was built on a similar kind of critical race theory and equity — but then it was about giving equity to white Southern slaveholders, who rejected the Declaration and the Constitution, and who sneered at reason and law.
The other thing is, modern tyrannies have been founded on glorifications of equity and will and power. And is this where we really want to go? Do we really want to go into these non-rational divisions of people, based on race and language and ethnicity? Is that really the direction that we want to take the nation? I don't think that it is. At that point I have to say, you tell me who is being responsible and who isn't.