All Men Are Created Equal

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ...” Beginning of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Dated July 4, 1776 (though written before and signed after that).

“All men are created equal.” Five words. Only five words. Yet they're all problematic for us. Individually, and as a group they require both explanation and a kind of justification in order to be properly understood. They may be “self evident,” but there seems to be some disagreement about what they mean. Let's look at them independently, and then together.

When the Founding Fathers said “All,” that's not really what they meant. They were actually referring to Caucasians, and preferably land owners. They weren't being racist or elitist. Those are more modern concepts. It would never have occurred to most of them, for example, to view slaves, who were imported from another part of the world, as part of their world. And they similarly excluded women, speaking about all “men.” Which is precisely what they intended. Although the English language doesn't consider gender, and the masculine form is often used so as to include both male and female, they weren't using any such trope. Women were considered inferiors and had no separate legal standing. They said and they meant men. We may reject that concept now, but we mislead when we impose our standards on them.

“Are.” It's a copula (or a linking, or copulative verb; often taking the form of a predicate nominative). Such verbs often appear independently as forms of the verb “to be.” Sometimes, however, and this is such a case, they give to other words, a sense of time. And “are” means now – or, in terms of the Declaration of Independence, at the time of the writing of the document. The founders probably understood it to mean “are, have always been, and would always be,” but they were dealing very much with the situation at the time of the writing, rather than concerning themselves with tense.

The author of the document, Thomas Jefferson, next used a word that might have been a problem for him but which was rhetorically useful – “created.” Jefferson was a deist, and personally rejected the idea that any Divine Being played an active part in his world. As Professor Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Professor of History at the University of Virginia, put it,

“... deist tendencies in the thought and language of American Revolutionaries reflected the exigencies of political and military mobilization. Americans looked to 'nature' and the Creator, 'nature’s God,' for guidance and justification as they sought to hasten the coming millennium, the Kingdom of God on earth—an epoch of enlightenment, peace, and plenty.”

Speaking of a “Creator” or “nature's God” was merely one of the “exigencies” of the situation; it was one of the justifications for the act he and the others were taking. (And it is a concept that is especially problematic nowadays in our secular society.)

Which brings us to the last word, but the one that is most thorny: “equal.” Certainly Jefferson and his colleagues were aware of the differences between men and women; between people of different races. And they viewed those with property as superior to those without. These were not merely differences. They were inequalities among people. Some were stronger than others, some more intelligent, some healthier, and some were better educated than others. And there were other characteristics that constituted inequalities, yet they asserted

All men are created equal.

What could they possibly have meant. Certainly those words could not have indicated a belief that there was literal equality, or sameness, of all individuals. But all, as Jefferson wrote and his fellow founders agreed,

“are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ...”

They viewed equality in terms of rights to which they were entitled. These were political rights, not entitlements in the sense the term is understood today. They spoke of equality, not equalization.

And that is a lesson we must all learn. While, justifiably, we should treat all as equals, we don't promote the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution when we attempt to “right the wrongs” of the past by equalization, and we should not attempt to do so. For doing so simply creates present wrongs. Affirmative action and income redistribution are as justified as giving the vote to six-year olds (and even those younger) lest we be guilty of agism. Acts like those represent an over-correction, and the source of injustices that will require further repair in the future.

All men are not created equal and pretending otherwise, like wishing, doesn't make it so. But consciousness of real differences allows us to deal with them in a manner that is not unfair to everyone else. Sometimes that will mean the deprivation of rights – for example with criminals – but to the degree possible we should bestow the rights and privileges of political equality on all our citizens, and find remedies for those who require them and could not survive without them, rather than condescend to them at the expense of others.

Pretending that everyone is the same is probably not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Next episode: “The Never-ending Middle East Conflict” – Would that this were not the case.