Why Americans Need To Rediscover The Founders’ View Of Equality

All people are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights. – John Adams

We have reached a time when each of us must make an effort to rediscover what Adams and Jefferson and the other Founders meant when they declared that we are all created equal.

For over a century, instead of trying to help each generation of Americans understand the Founders’ idea of America, political thinkers in academia and their minions in the press have made a concerted effort to replace the Founders’ vision. They have worked to redefine the very terms that the Founders used. No term has suffered more at their hands than “equality.”

It is remarkable that while the Founders’ writings were focused on equality, public discourse today focuses on social and economic inequality; “inequality” has replaced “equality” as the term of art in discussing America.

This focus on inequality is part of the assault on the American idea that we see every day in the media and in academia. It has become an important source of many Americans’s confusion about America, causing many Americans to doubt that America is an exemplary country, or even a good one.

Today, an ever-expanding notion of inequality dominates public discourse. Assigning grades to schoolwork has come under attack for promoting inequality, as has using merit to determine who is to be admitted to America’s universities. The Founders would have found this preoccupation with inequality — and the understanding of equality implied by it — simply absurd.