Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean when you suggest a "'rule of law' paradigm of equality"? I have no doubt you mean something specific, but this combination of words suggests nothing about this paradigm of equality, nor about what role the "rule of law" plays in or has relationship to equality.
Rule of law provides a foundation for equality; having a system that treats everyone in a predictable, unbiased, and well-known fashion gives them something they can count on when they plan and engage in all the activities of life. The more your fate rests in the hands of officers acting capriciously, with the power of vague unpredictable rules that you were never aware of, the more difficult and terrifying your life becomes. When you don't have rule of law, who you are in relation to the powerful determines what you can do, and who you can be, thus depriving many (if not most) of opportunity, while subjecting them to the worst form of oppression, embodied by constant terror.
It is unfortunate that no country, province, state, or city fully follows the principles of 'rule of law' but there is definitely a spectrum, and some are much better than others.
You really didn't, except to offer some hand-waving nature v nurture nonsense and insults that don't elucidate or engage Rawls' ideas at all.
> Rule of law provides a foundation for equality; having a system that treats everyone in a predictable, unbiased, and well-known fashion gives them something they can count on when they plan and engage in all the activities of life. The more your fate rests in the hands of officers acting capriciously, with the power of vague unpredictable rules that you were never aware of, the more difficult and terrifying your life becomes. When you don't have rule of law, who you are in relation to the powerful determines what you can do, and who you can be, thus depriving many (if not most) of opportunity, while subjecting them to the worst form of oppression, embodied by constant terror.
You appear to assume that "rule of law" as an idea provides any guarantees at all that the laws themselves by which one is ruled are at all just, fair, or equitable. It is, at best, foolish to make such an assumption. People living under a lawful regime of unjust laws will find themselves in no better shape than those who toil under a less lawful society. History is replete with such circumstances, including:
- Jews under the rule of law of National Socialism
- former slaves and their descendants under the rule of law of the post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow South
- slaves under the rule of law in every Western colonial/imperial territory, and the pre-Civil War US
- interracial couples under the rule of law before Loving v Virginia
- women under the rule of law throughout Western nations before the advent of equal suffrage
The rule of law provides no innate or guaranteed protection from inequality or injustice. Who you are in relation to the powerful always determines what you can be and do, especially within the context of legally proscribed behaviors. Those who hold power typically make the laws. When the laws are unjust, inequitable, and unfair, the rule of law does nothing to alleviate such a condition.
Your dismissiveness illustrates your foolishness, and you clearly made no effort to understand my point; or perhaps you lack the mental capacity to read three posts down.
> They are related, but not completely determinitive of one another; it is a 'nature vs nurture' issue, as I describe in my comment on a lower post. Existing evidence shows that preferences and understandings are a result of nature and nurture; there are a number of interesting studies on the subject, which obtain differing results, but none agrees with Rawls' assumptions. You can find this evidence in a number of fields including psychology on moral reasoning, educational psychology, and studies on philosophy.
First off, it's a rather vacant argument to suggest one's preferences as they relate to one's material conditions and circumstances, are "nature v nurture". What preferences are you suggesting are natural, divorced from one's material conditions and circumstances? Which are you willing to agree to being informed, established, or perpetuated by one's material conditions and circumstances? What evidence are you specifically pointing to as differentiating natural preferences vs those which are learned within one's social space? Most importantly, what at all does this evidence have to do with the veil of ignorance or Rawls' arguments for justice, fairness, or equality—which isn't some Rawlsian invention, but has a long history in the works of Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and other seminal political and social theorists?
You seem to have a conception that Rawls' ideas are somehow reducible to a single binary format of true/false. This is what I mean by pointing out your comments show no actual understanding of Rawls, or any other thinkers who discuss the veil of ignorance or equality. You don't realize that what you think you're disputing with relation to Rawls isn't something Rawls has suggested to be any different. What assumptions do you think Rawls makes that you believe you—and all this alleged evidence—disagrees with and proves to be incorrect assumptions?