Introduction

When I was young, the milkman would deliver his product in glass half gallon jugs, left by the backdoor in portable metal wire carriers that would hold, if memory serves me, a total of 2 gallons. This was before homogenization, meaning that the cream would rise to the top, and the milk jug had to be shaken by hand each time you poured if you wanted it blended. Alternatively, if you wanted just cream, you could pour it off the top for cooking, coffee, etc. It greatly benefits all of us to praise anyone who reaches their full potential, and to encourage others to do the same, including those with more talent, more opportunities and more resources. A rising tide does indeed raise all boats. All of us need the cream to rise to the top. As we need everyone to be able to live up to their full potential.

Before the homogenization process, if left alone, the cream would always rise to the top. Today, we are homogenizing our society so that we are becoming more and more blended, more and more the same. And more and more average. 

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

One of my enduring memories growing up in Strafford Village on the “Main Line” West of Philadelphia, was getting the milk off the back step when freezing temperatures had caused the cream at the top of the milk jugs to push up the waxed cardboard cap, revealing about 2” of cream sticking out the top, in addition to what was still in the bottle at the top. I was fascinated by the mini cream tower, topped by the waxed cardboard cap–now detached from the bottle. I knew that freezing temperatures caused liquid to expand, and was charmed by seeing that physical law in action. BTW, this is where the term, “The cream always rises to the top.” originated.

Whole milk, unhomogenized, was all that you could buy. Today, milk is homogenized, and sold as 0% fat (skim), 1%, 2% and 4% (whole milk). You can get heavy cream, light cream, half and half–and maybe more variations. But the cream is not allowed to rise to the top. 

Today’s Key Point: Homogenizing milk intentionally keeps the cream from rising to the top in the container. The Homogenization of America intentionally tries to keep the cream from rising to the top in our society. 

In schools and increasingly in our thinking, we are focusing our efforts on “equality”, with many people, notably former President Barack Obama, calling inequality the defining challenge of our time. 

But we must be very careful about what we mean by inequality. Here are the options.

Legal inequality. There is none of that left. If you know of areas where there is inequality under the law, please jump into the comments section with your examples.

Inequality of opportunities. That will always be with us, and impossible, and wrong to change.

Inequality of results. See above.

Equality of results and freedom are incompatible. If people are free to succeed or fail on their own, to rise and fall on the basis of their talents and effort, we will never have equal results. If we insist on–demand as a matter of law–equality of results, we will have very few freedoms. Let’s hear another voice on this subject: “Human beings are born with different capacities; if they are free they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” -Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

Now, let’s address inequality of opportunity. We have that in abundance. Some of it we must leave alone, and other parts we must correct. Using education as an example, we see there are inequalities that we should not try to fix, and inequalities that we must use all the tools at our disposal to correct –and do it now. If a family is able to afford to send their children to top private schools from pre-K through graduate school, well, good for them. My parents couldn’t, and neither can I. But that does