FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 'EQUALITY' SHOULD NOT BE JUST A WORD

Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2014) ("What exactly does the Declaration have to say about equality? First of all, the text focuses on political equality. In the twentieth century we came to understand political equality as meaning primarily formal civic rights: the rights to vote, serve on juries, and run for elected office. These political rights are, of course, fundamental, but civic rights are only a part of the story about political equality. The Declaration has much more to say." "As it moves from its opening salvo for divorce to its closing recommitment of the colonists to one another, the Declaration first sets it sights on achieving freedom from domination for the polity as a whole, and for individual citizens. It lays out egalitarian access to the instrument of government as crucial to the pursuit of happiness. There we find the familiar emphasis on civic rights. Then the Declaration moves on to argue for an egalitaratian cultivation of collective intelligence as well as for an associational egalitarianism that establishes norms and practices of genuine reciprocity as the baseline for decent interactions with one's fellow citizens. Finally, the Declaration shows us the egalitarianism of co-creation and co-ownership of a shared world, an expectation for inclusive participation that fosters in each citizens the self-understanding that she, too, he, too, helps to make, and is responsible for, this world in which we live together. That rich and expansive notion of political equality is the ground of independence, personal and political." Id. at 275-276.).