The basis of civil equality is the right of free association.
When free association rights are protected we’re able to meet with people who share similar worldviews to ourselves.
This shared sense of camaraderie then allows mutual interest to become a community’s collective focal point.
Together, with a common cause in a tight knit community, people can then have a reprieve from civilization and all the alienating differences contained therein. In these small communities true equality can truly be felt.
But this great source of equality is being undermined -- not because people can’t freely associate, but because people no longer want to associate with anyone or anything.
Accordingly this willful lack of association with others is perpetuating a resentful sense of permanent inequality.
This feeling is caused by the increasing dependence of younger generations on their parents.
For those who live under the rule of their parents into adulthood feel unequal because, indeed, they are -- for they must resentfully submit to the rules and demands of their parents whose independence and wealth create the impression of familial superiority.
Accordingly, the resentment that results from this self-subordination undermines the confidence these younger generations’ need to freely associate and mingle with others.
Further the absence of young generations in civil society only amplifies this problem.
Younger generations’ absence from civil society, after all, creates a verbal void filled by noisy and divisive tribal partisans. These tribal partisans then use their platforms to further alienate younger generations from each other by reassuring younger generations of the righteousness of their alienation and frustration.
The politics that results from this mess hardly facilitates a respect for equality of all people and not just those in one’s partisan tribe.
Accordingly if this decline continues America will be neither a free nor equal nation.
Zigmund Reichenbach holds a M.A. in Philosophy from West Chester University. You can follow him on Twitter @zreichenbach1.