The case against egalitarianism is that it deprives a large majority of citizens of a sizable portion of their legally owned property. Egalitarians claim that equal concern for all citizens obliges the government to adopt this policy, but they not only fail to justify this claim, they explicitly acknowledge, as we have seen, that it cannot be justified. On the basis of this unjustified and unjustifiable claim they advocate depriving moral, prudent, and law-abiding people of their property in order to benefit others without asking whether they are immoral, imprudent, and criminal. In advocating this injustice, they obfuscate the responsibility of individuals for the lives they lead, dogmatically elevate equality into a value that overrides all other values, and arbitrarily restrict equal concern to the citizens of a democracy, while their rhetoric demands that it be extended worldwide. Egalitarianism is thus an unjust, unjustified, inconsistent, and absurd policy of discrimination. The time has come to add it to that odd collection of historically influential but indefensible beliefs which includes the divine right of kings, classless society, superiority of the white race, damnation outside the church, planned economy, and an idyllic prehistoric society which civilization has corrupted. The defenders of these prejudices were like egalitarians are in clothing their indefensible beliefs in moralistic fervour and excoriating their critics as immoral. But critics should not let them get away with doing by bullying what they cannot do by reasoned argument.
(John Kekes, "Against Egalitarianism," Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 58 [2006]: 137-56, at 153-4)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 