Commentary Reading one of the first new presidential executive orders—titled “Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government”—was for me a depressing experience. Even the term “racial equity” sent shivers up my spine: it was reminiscent of the terms “Jewish science” and “bourgeois morality,” as used by the Nazis and the Bolsheviks respectively. The order begins with the words, “Equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy.” This at best is a half-truth depending very much on the meaning attached to the concept of equality of opportunity. If it means that no individual is to be denied freedom under the law because of his social origins, all well and good. Not many people nowadays could be found to deny the desirability of this principle, though it was in fact denied within living memory. But if by equality of opportunity is meant equality of …