Equality!

Did you know that equality can mean something different to each person!? It does not always mean everyone has equal rights in society. The typical definition of equality is; the condition of being equal. Everyone in the society shares equally in society's assets. Meeting basic needs- employment, housing, education, health care- is highly valued. Look back at WWII and you can see that the views of the American's and the views of the Soviet's on equality are very different.

The Americans believed that equality is when everyone has the chance to succeed, when everyone is treated the same way by the legal system and when everyone shares equally in the material wealth and society. The last equality is not as important to the United States as the first two. Equality is very important to the United States, during the Cold War we made changes to the equality of opportunity and the equality before the law.

The Soviet's (Russian's) believed that equality in condition was the most important for a healthy society. The United States did not. The soviets argued that a society has to share its material wealth with its people so no one has an unfair advantage. During the Cold War they gave employment, health care and other necessities to their citizens. Even though they said that everyone got equal opportunity that was not true. The top Communist Party officials got the best housing, health care, automobiles and food before any of the other citizens. This was not equality!

I was surprised to hear about the difference in the views of equality from different countries, because when I think of equality I think: everyone is equal no matter what and we all have the same rights. In different countries this word may be defined as something totally different. If you have other words that you know that may appear or are defined differently in other places please comment on my blog and let me know! Thank You!