'All men created equal' means exactly what it says

“Whatever goes around, comes around,” it is said.

In the physical world, predicting cycles is not particularly difficult if one has reliable information. Astronomers can predict to the second the orbits of all the planets circling the sun. Predicting celestial events like the return of certain comets into our galaxy is taken for granted. Less precisely but no less accepted, predictions of short term weather and long term seasons are more and more understood and utilized. Cycles, it seems, reflect natural laws.

To a large extent, this is also true in the world of human behavior. Certain underlying cycles appear to occur in the long-term study of history. Human nature, apparently, resists change quite rigidly. Revolution from a motivated few seems more likely to cause change than evolution from the masses. The fact that society does appear to change over time only shows that during certain periods, underlying tendencies gain or lose traction and are manifested in the surroundings of the day.

In the history of the world, only one attempt at government has been made with a comprehensive understanding of this axiom, and a proposal for dealing with it perpetually. The basis for this attempt is found in a unique document, which lies like bedrock in the foundation of this form of government. It begins with a statement universally defining certain principles. Establishing these principles as their foundation, the founders of this unique new form of government then went on to precisely define how it was to be administered. A generally accepted understanding was that, over time, change would occur, so a system of amending previous proclamations was adopted. The underlying principles were to be preserved, however, in spite of inevitable change.

Over time, as predicted, the pendulum of political change has swung widely in The United States of America. Strong debates have moved public consensus back and forth with greater or lesser degrees of resistance. Slavery was allowed, then it wasn’t. Women were not allowed to vote, then they were. Young children were forced to work in factories before it was outlawed. Alcohol was declared illegal, then overwhelmingly restored to legality, etc. etc.

Fierce debates rage today over polar disagreements like: whether individuals should be allowed to arm themselves with stockpiles of deadly weapons with no conditions imposed; or whether an individual or a group has a legitimate right to express their opinion using any manner of speech they wish; or whether the nation has a moral mandate to step militarily into the affairs of foreign nations where perceived threats or strongly diverse ideals exist; or whether a particular religion should be formally acknowledged as our national religion - and many more. Proponents of different sides of these debates are currently known as Conservatives or Liberals, although over the decades, other names have been applied - many with more pejorative intent.

For one of the few times in our long history however, bedrock principles are currently falling into serious dispute. That pendulum shift went recklessly on an arc almost too far long ago, and now threatens to come round again. The term “all men are created equal” is interpreted, by an increasing segment, to narrowly mean white, Protestant Christian men with bloodlines directly descended from the original settlers. It’s an old position come round again.

Americans, of course, never elevated the American Indian to the status of “man.” Slaves, mostly Negroes, were likewise mostly excluded from the same recognition. For generations, Chinese, Irish, Italian, German individuals were relegated to a denigrated second class – castigated by sons and daughters of immigrants from those very countries. Although legal distinctions have been removed, those classifications have only slowly and grudgingly been allowed to fall under the “all men” distinction.

Recognizing all men to be equal has always been a difficult task for many and impossible for some. Today, Muslims are the pariahs-du-jour. All Muslims are considered evil and prone to terrorism. It matters not that half the world’s population is Muslim in one form or another. It matters not that the vast majority of Muslims desire a peaceful and equitable world. Like the Japanese and Germans, etc. before them, the Irish, Italians and all people of color - all Muslims are to be shunned and feared. What once went around is once again making its rounds.

Blacks and Latinos, of course, have never fully escaped their assignment to an underclass. Catholics, Mormons and Lutherans are marginally accepted, but not by the hard core proponents of a modern caste system which only allows white, Protestant Christian men as the elite class. Those at the top, naturally, get to make the rules, or, in some cases, ignore them.

The Declaration of Independence did not equivocate. The claim concerning “all men” is a complete declarative sentence, unmodified. This has proven to be a bitter pill for a great many people to swallow

In the preamble to its Constitution, the United States promises to promote the “general welfare.” It makes no distinction concerning various individuals or groups.

These principles are increasingly coming under narrow and self-serving interpretations.

Likewise are several of the constitutional amendments - the first amendment in particular. Thomas Jefferson must have anticipated just such a thing when he wrote:
“On every question of construction, (let us) carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

That spirit is much needed today. May it come round once more.