To the editor:

At last the popular misconception of the meaning of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” has surfaced in Kansas’ political debate. To my wonder and delight, Mr. Vonnegut himself spoke out against the misreading of his story.

The notion that “Harrison Bergeron” represents a counsel of despair for proponents of equality can now be put to rest. A careful reading of the story could have prevented the error in the first place. It begins with a fictional truth (“The year was 2081”), and a fictional lie (“and everybody was finally equal”). We know it is a lie because the rest of the story shows how unequally power is distributed in the United States of the future. The Handicapper General and the government he serves enjoy enormous power while ordinary citizens lack the power even to enjoy their natural beauty, intelligence and strength.

The story calls to mind Pol Pot’s claim that he was creating equality in Cambodia. Like the Handicapper General, he abused a misconception about human equality: that it is the product of government action.

Just the opposite is true. We hold that being created equal is self-evident, but we allow our government and most of our institutions to create and maintain social, economic and political inequality in the forms of accumulated wealth, concentrated political power, authoritarian work conditions and unequal education. Worst of all, we permit the free exchange of forms of artificial inequality through the medium of money.

Paul Fairchild,

Lawrence