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While appearing on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” on March 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), America’s most infamous socialist, caused quite a ruckus when he admitted he favors the traditional canon of “equality” over the nouveau dogma that has become all the rage among the modern left: “equity.”

The exchange, which has since gone viral, began when Maher asked Sanders, “Are we confusing equality of opportunity with trying to guarantee equity in outcomes?”

Maher added, “I think this word ‘equity’ has come into the language in the last few years and before that we didn’t hear it a lot. And I think a lot of people hear ‘equity’ and they hear ‘equality’ like it’s the same word, but it’s not the same word and the same concept.”

“So, how would you differentiate between equity and equality?” Maher inquired.

To this, Sanders replied, “Well equality, we talk about – uh, I don’t know what the answer to that is.” Then, Bernie paused to collect his thoughts as the audience let out an audible chuckle.

“Equality is equality of opportunity,” Sanders continued. “We live in a society, we want all people, no matter what the color of your skin is…”

Then comes the best part. Maher interrupts Sanders in the midst of his rambling retort and asks him point blank: “Equity, I think, is more of a guarantee of outcome, is it not?”

Sanders responded with a sheepish, “Yeah, I think so.” At this point, Maher asks Bernie the ultimate question: “Which side do you come down on?” Without even flinching, Sanders answered, “Equality.”

Stop the press! Bernie Sanders, the socialist OG, now favors “equality” over “equity”?

I wonder what’s next? Will Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Bernie’s socialist protégé, exclaim that she supports fossil fuels in place of the Green New Deal?

Interestingly, Sanders’ faux pas is in direct opposition to the Biden administration, which has made “equity” its primary priority from day one. In fact, on January 20, his very first day in the Oval Office, Biden issued an executive order stating, “Our Nation deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda … It is therefore the policy of my Administration that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity.”

So, in practical terms, what has Biden’s equity agenda actually wrought? In a nutshell, it has reinstituted the same type of de jure racial discrimination the Democratic Party fought tooth and nail to uphold before the civil rights movement. Yet, now, the script has been flipped.

For example, under Biden’s “whole-of-government equity agenda,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced in 2021 that it will provide black farmers with $4 billion of debt relief. Stunningly, the USDA made it crystal clear that these funds will only be awarded to black farmers. White farmers, Asian farmers, and Latino farmers need not apply.

And, just in case you think this patently racist policy is an aberration, consider just a few of the other equity-oriented initiatives courtesy of the Biden administration.

Biden’s $1.1 trillion infrastructure package includes billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked specifically to “further advance racial equity.”

The administration has also doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to “build black wealth and narrow the racial wealth gap.”

And, under Biden, the administration has created the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, with the broad mission of “Increasing the Federal Government’s efforts to address current and historic environmental injustice.”

Make no mistake, by no means is this anything close to a comprehensive list of the equity actions taken by the Biden administration over the past two years. Actually, it is just the tip of the iceberg.

In sum, despite Bernie’s feeble attempt to portray himself as a champion of equality, anyone with half a brain knows that Bernie and his colleagues on the left absolutely abhor equality of opportunity. For them, equity of outcome is the mantra that they religiously adhere to, even if it means resurrecting the despicable discrimination that Americans fought so hard to uproot from the Civil War to the civil rights movement.

Welcome to postmodern America, where moral relativism flourishes, racism is back in vogue, and the federal government picks winners and losers based on nothing more than one’s skin color. It truly is a far cry from Martin Luther King Jr’s dream that his children will “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is the editorial director at The Heartland Institute.