The “all men are created equal” mess in the Declaration of Independence is the most damaging and subversive mess ever penned by an American. Think about it. One cannot believe in a sovereign and involved God and believe that mess. Why, because we clearly are NOT equal, even in our natural condition. Certain men are endowed with athletic gifts, physical gift, looks, intelligence or whatever that they had absolutely no control over. God clearly did not create them equally.
Now, if we omit the “…created equal” and merely say, “All men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights….(you know the rest), then it essentially says the same thing without the poison pill of equality. Men have rights granted by God and governments are ordained to uphold them. When those governments don’t, they don’t deserve to exist.
But equality? No, it is an impossibility. And if we mean equality before the law, fine, but the law is from man and not from God. This idea of “divine equality” is pernicious. It establishes a separate virtue from the enumerated inalienable rights. Thus, today we can subordinate rights to life, liberty, property to equality. Think about it, is that not exactly what affirmative action purports to do? It is government with a foot on the scales to the detriment of one person’s inalienable rights in the name of “equality”. It is why we can’t we tell the tranny freaks to sit down and shut up. Because they are equal to normal people. And as we have seen equality now trumps the other rights. It is the trope Lincoln used to bash Southerners and deny them their lives, liberty, and property.
If you look at all the evil done by communist and socialist governments over the decades, it is always done in the name of equality.
If you go back to Adam and Eve in the Garden, how did Satan tempt Eve? He promised Eve to be “like God”.
It is telling that you think the meaning of equality in the Declaration has the same meaning of equality envisioned in Marxism "as it is surely a sign of our times that so many Americans no longer know what these words mean, or what their signal importance has been to peoples around the world." Your ignorance of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence is exceeded only by your ignorance of American History and the Constitution. The signatories to the Declaration and the Framers and ratifiers of the Constitution did not mean that "all men were" equal in talent, height, intelligence, looks or any other such superficial criteria or that government should act to make them so. They would have to have been imbeciles to believe that (as one would have to be equally imbecilic to think that they believed that!) when their own eyes told them otherwise every single second of every single day. The equality spoken of by Jefferson is the natural and God-given equal right to equal treatment under the law. Lincoln famously remarked (paraphrasing) that the black man might not be my equal in intelligence or other matters, but in his right to put into his mouth the bread from the labor of his own hands, he most certainly is my equal. Lincoln was saying no more than what Jefferson said in the Declaration. The colonies revolted from Great Britain because GB denied them their equal rights as human beings---the right of self-government, for example. The self-evident abstract truth was 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.—That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Lincoln famously showed (with what one scholar called "Euclidean geometric precision") that there was literally no argument justifying the enslavement of blacks that did not simultaneously justify the enslavement of whites. Said Lincoln: "If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?—You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be a slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean whites are intellectually the superiors to blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
It is only by recourse to the great truth that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and the self-evident truth that all men are equal in their right to equal treatment under the law that the various arguments for tyranny can be refuted.
