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We hold this absurdity to be self-evident…
The first sentence of The Declaration of Independence begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” Many people stop right there and think, “huh?” I mean, I can’t play basketball as well as Michael Jordan. I can’t run like Usain Bolt. I can’t sing like Luciano Pavarotti. I’m too big to be a jockey and too small to be an offensive lineman. You get my point. People are different. Obviously. Perhaps Jefferson misspoke. Perhaps he intended to say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created unequal…” Stupid auto-correct. But regardless of why, that’s exactly what he said.
Perhaps he was trying to express the Christian belief that we are all equal before God. That would make sense. But that’s not what he said. The rest of the document is very clear in its meaning. It seems unlikely that Jefferson just goofed up. Well, no biggie, right? It’s just a nice platitude to get the Declaration rolling – like singing The National Anthem before a baseball game, right? Whatever.
Right. Well, maybe not. I think this has created a real problem in our society. Since we’re all created equal, then any difference in outcome must be the result of some form of unfairness. The playing field must not be level, otherwise, a bunch of equal people would be equally successful, right? It must be racism, or sexism, or some other form of discrimination. That’s the only thing that makes sense, obviously.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the study of Darwin led to ‘scientific consensus’ that eugenics was obviously true, many people took that as proof that America was built on a lie, and could not last for long. Before the Civil War, there were some in the South who defended secession using similar reasoning. In the late 1700s, many kings around the world predicted that the American Experiment would crash and burn quickly, because of this apparent defect in its founding.
As America outlawed slavery and gave full citizenship rights to women, blacks, and everybody else, the country became better and better. Rather than falling apart as some anticipated, America has been strengthened by acknowledging the worth of every individual. As each individual citizen was freed up to achieve whatever they could with the talent, work ethic, and opportunities available to them, then America as a country became wealthier, happier, and more powerful. It’s the greatest success story of all time.
But now we’ve moved past the Civil Rights movement. With the push for reparations, critical race theory, affirmative action, and various other wealth / power transfers, America seems to be paralyzed into compliance. I think part of the reason is that if we are all created equal, than any inequality must be due to unfairness. And that unfairness must be corrected. That’s the whole point of government, right?
Now, a modern American conservative would say that the government’s job is to provide equal opportunities, so that citizens of varying abilities and talents can make the most of their potential, whatever that is.
But that’s not what Jefferson said. He said that we are all created equal. It’s a lovely sentiment, even it if it is clearly untrue, which would become clear if I ever tried to play one on one with Michael Jordan. And since we’re all created equal, then the fact that Michael Jordan is wealthier than I am is clearly the result of some sort of unfairness. Right?
But I think that this lovely sentiment may be creating real problems for us now.
I wonder what Jefferson meant by that? I presume he meant that we all had equal worth before God, but if that’s the case, why didn’t he just say that? Jefferson was not a sloppy writer. And you don’t begin the founding document of your new country with sloppy writing. Surely he gave that first sentence some thought, and he said precisely what he intended to say. As he did in everything else he wrote.
So why did he say that?
Does it matter that our country is founded, at least partially, on a statement that is obviously not true (beautiful and optimistic though it may be…)?
I wrote a piece on this topic a couple years ago, and when I couldn’t get it to make any sense, I dumped it. I do that a lot.
Anyway, last week I listened to Steven Hayward & Michael Anton debating this topic on a podcast. I was somewhat gratified to learn that I wasn’t the only one who wondered about this, and even scholars like Hayward and Anton couldn’t get it to make sense, either. And neither could Jaffa or Strauss or Lincoln. So if nothing else, I’m in good company.
So I tried once again to get something coherent out of this mess. I failed again, shrugged, and hit ‘publish.’ Sorry about that.
This seems a bit esoteric. But I don’t think it is.
I look forward to hearing your perspective. Am I placing too much importance on one sentence (even if it is the opening statement of our Declaration of Independence)?
Is this apparent glaring flaw in reasoning important to current events, or to the structure of our society?
If so, can it be reasoned out?
Thanks in advance for your help on this…
Published in General
I don’t think you can separate the first clause of the sentence from the second, “that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, etc.” I think that’s what he meant by being created equal.
I suspect there is a hint to his meaning in here:
I’ve always meant to read Jaffa. He spent a couple decades of his career on this question…
This is a particular set of reasons why I think the colloquial wisdom of “do not ascribe to malice that which could also be ascribed to incompetence” ultimately fails.
If you take the position that our halls of power are littered with stupid people that make mistake after mistake after mistake, then we have already failed in the endeavor to avoid class stratification and to elevate the qualified from the bottom.
Our damned short-attention-span, character-limited society.
To isolate that passage from the rest of the sentence and the expansive sentiments that follow is to strip important context:
Jefferson was an idealist. I think he really believed what wrote in the Declaration to be factually true. He helped found what became the Democratic party, and was a strong friend to the Revolution in France. That latter even after it was obviously a horribly cruel thing. The idea that we should be equal in fact, not just before God or the Law, underpins today’s Progressive ideology as it did the early Democrats. It is an ideology so beguiling that it convinces certain thinkers that eugenics simply delineates human races from non-human, inferior races. Their only real policy difference between then and now is that, in the pursuit of reliable votes, the “inferior” races are to be subsidized into equality instead of enslaved for their labor.
That Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration can be interpreted as equal before God–not an unreasonable presumption in that day–, or equal before the Law, is what makes it attractive to idealists of all stripes. And made it resound through the Colonies, and made the Declaration the model and gold standard for the ideals of western society through the following centuries.
I simply accept that Jefferson was a terribly flawed man, with a unrealistic opinion of human nature, who happened to put to paper an idea that far exceeded his design.
I have never been confused by the statement. If anyone is confused it is because they are complacent with living in a (relatively) free and classless society. It is a form of “afluenza”. The Left is working as hard as they can to institute a class-based society of elite party members and those that serve them.
When Michael Jordan was an hour old, he wasn’t any better at basketball than you were when you were an hour old.
First a quibble, Doc. That’s not actually the first sentence in the Declaration. The first sentence begins: “When in the course of human events . . .” But the sentence that you identify, while not the first, is the most important, I think.
Jefferson was engaging in soaring rhetoric, aided by Franklin and Adams, who made important edits to the sentence that you quote. The point was to justify the extreme act of rebellion, and to provide a broad and vague statement of war aims that would both inspire people, and be sufficiently vague to allow people with different views to think that it meant whatever they might want it to have meant.
It may have been a mistake. It was not the occasion for a 50-page treatise on the Lockean theory of government.
In context, I think that “created equal” was directed at the divine right of kings claimed by George III, and the privileges of the British aristocracy generally.
I think that you are correct about the unintended consequences of this rhetoric. The same holds for the use of “liberty.”
Philo’s been pretty annoyed with me lately over my objections to an over-emphasis on “liberty.” He has a good linguistic point — that “liberty” is used as a term of art, with a specific and reasonably well understood meaning in the context of the American founding. I think that the same goes for “equality.” But there is ambiguity in both terms, and without further explanation, people can argue that “liberty” includes what most would consider “license,” and that “equality” could mean one of two erroneous things: (1) outcomes should be equal, despite unequal abilities or merit, which I think is wrong as a moral and philosophical matter, or (2) there are no differences in ability or merit, which is plainly wrong as an empirical matter.
I think that Phil gives a good assessment of Jefferson in #6 above, though I’d probably say “tragically flawed” rather than “terribly flawed.” I think that Adams was far wiser than Jefferson, and Washington superior to both.
If I had my druthers, the faces on Mt. Rushmore would be Washington, Adams, Lincoln, and Polk.
Yeah, but he had the genes to be 6’6 and a great athlete, while I did not.
I need to hear this podcast. How do I Google it or whatever?
The last American Mind podcast is really good. I wish I have been listening to these guys for a long time.
Not only that, but in reaction to the social systems in which people were born into different stations in life, and had certain rights and privileges based on their birth.
Yes, making liberty into an abstract universal to which everyone is entitled did a lot to pave the way for the totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th century and the worse ones that are trying to be invented now.
There’s nothing the government can do to fix that, is there?
I can’t remember. I’ll try to find it.
I’m pretty sure it was a ‘Powerline’ podcast. Pretty recent. Within the past few weeks.
Everybody makes this so complicated.
This is how I see it.
Everybody needs to get on board with the Judge Learned Hand “Spirit of Liberty” speech. That is how the country was set up and if you don’t agree with that you need a more authoritarian constitution.
The government should produce actual “public goods” only. Look it up. When the government goes beyond that it actually reduces GDP and it creates social problems.
The Fed should only back up financial institutions in a punitive way. It should not push the economy around in any fashion. The way it has been run since the word “go” is unconstitutional and all it really does on net is create social problems.
Every government actuarial system should be 100% funded at all times except for recessions. If you are going to use it for redistribution, be explicit about it. The whole thing is just set up as theft right now. Furthermore, there is no reason for any government actuarial system beyond Social Security and Medicare.
If you simply did that, everybody would have equal opportunity. (I am assuming a decent justice system, here.)
The left doesn’t want equal opportunity. It wants equal outcomes.
I know, but I’m trying to simplify it for our side.
Just to be clear, I think there are plenty of Democrats that don’t understand that. They just get on board with any dumb idea and they try to take political ground anyway they can.
deleted lol
Aren’t you glad you live in a country that keeps its central bank separate from Congress and the treasury? lol
https://ricochet.com/podcast/powerline/the-three-whisky-happy-hour-with-guest-bartender-michael-anton/
I’ll definitely be in the minority here, but Jaffa, Strauss and Lincoln are not the direction you want to go when understanding Jefferson.
Jefferson wrote in 1825 (he died in 1826) that the Declaration of Independence was to be “an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.” He did not declare that it “find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of….” The Declaration was never intended to be a radical or revolutionary statement.
When Jefferson stated that “all men are created equal” he was codifying existing legal principles of English common law that he believed were not being honored in respects to the colonies. The Charter of Liberties, the Magna Carta and (mainly) the English Bill of Rights established that there were limits to the authority of the monarch. Jefferson was actually taking a traditional approach here, not a revolutionary one. All men were created equal – under the law. Jefferson believed the King was violating the law, he did not believe the government itself was tyrannical or unjust.
Jefferson was also influenced by George Mason of Virginia’s Declaration of Resolves (Mason was also borrowing from Locke’s Treatises on Civil Government) basically streamlining Mason’s language that “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights…namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and maintaining happiness and safety” into Jefferson’s “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Jefferson meant that all citizens or freeholders are, as Mason wrote, born “equally free and independent” under the law. Jefferson equated “happiness” with property and safety. Slaves were not citizens or freeholders, therefore not subject to the same law. Of course this is very uncomfortable from a 21st century perspective, but this was of course a norm in the 18th century. Jaffa and Strauss follow the Lincoln thinking in that America was a radical departure from existing English laws and norms, which the evidence does not support. I believe if you view Jefferson (and the founding) as a conservative and not a radical or progressive departure, the “created equal” line makes much more sense.
Thanks Clifford!
Brilliant stuff, James – thanks so much!
And thanks to everybody else on the thread, too. Fascinating perspectives.
I wish there was a similar website on the left, where I could read leftists exploring and challenging their reasoning. I would pay a membership to read it. It would be fascinating.
I also find it fascinating that such a site does not exist for the left. I wonder why that is?
This is the way this works. There is no limiting principle on the left. On the right we can only keep going until we are arguing with anarchists about what you can privatize. There is a literal limit. Furthermore, it’s not even equitable, politically feasible, or practical to ignore how much government interference there is to keep pushing that way in a linear fashion.
On the left, this situation keeps making things worse so they get to propose more dumb ideas no matter what. Some of them get momentum and then they will discuss them “tactically” with you until they get their way. They aren’t interested in a serious policy discussion. Everything moves left constantly. They can keep doing this until the bond market collapses or we get a big war or something.
That’s what “created” almost has to mean, and “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” takes away any slivers of ambiguity.
At least I’m pretty sure.
I would suggest equal in stature as well – at the point of their creation. As opposed to being more or less noble straight out of the box.
I was about to write my thoughts on this matter, but James Salerno already said what I had to say. Somehow, I never much troubled myself over what the phrase meant. I always understood it to mean equal before the law. I wish I could remember when it was explained to me – probably in elementary school.
I dig!
The rest of this stuff is important, but as far as knowing Locke to get a working understanding of Jefferson goes, here’s my homeboy Locke:
Sure they could. They could outlaw basketball as discriminatory, or make Jordan wear heavy weights and funny glasses, or whatever. Think Harrison Bergeron.
They shouldn’t do so, but they want to, and will try if they get the chance. They actually do this sort of thing to some extent, with lower test standards and other qualifications for favored groups, in education and employment. They also equalize education so that the smarter kids don’t get challenged, and develop less.