Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Improving on Jefferson

The oft-quoted scriptural proof-text of American fundamentalism is Jefferson's line in the Declaration that "all men are created equal."

I wish he had written it differently. And more closely to what he meant, which I take to be a denial of hereditary aristocracy. As in: "the Creator has endowed all men equally with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The massive social engineering required to achieve a semblance of the egalitarianism mistakenly issuing from the text is proof by itself that the original line is a description of rights and most definitely not of achievement.

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