First of all, Happy Birthday, America.

This Independence Day is probably a good time to make a point about something that’s become controversial in recent years. There is a faction at work in the political landscape that seems to have a vested interest in convincing right-wingers to abandon our commitment to freedom through individual rights (which the Founding Fathers won for us), and instead obsess over petty, superficial genetic differences.

A descent into white tribalism under an appropriately pale “god-emperor” is the only thing that can save “muh westurn sivulizayshun,” they tell us. I suspect some of them actually believe it. Part of their dogma has necessarily been to ridicule the idea of equality–especially as it is so famously referred to in the Declaration of Independence.

First of all, some of the men who supported the Patriot cause during the Revolution certainly harbored sentiments that are considered racist (or at least separatist) today. Some of them may have even been almost as racially-obsessed as the current Democrat Party…though that’s rather difficult to imagine. This is not an attempt to whitewash them all as abolitionists or colorblind according to the Current Year ideal.

But secondly, neither were they stupid. The Founders were highly intelligent men, more literate than probably anybody who currently works in Washington DC, or in the mainstream media.

Time-warp the Founding Fathers to present-day America, sit them down for a debate, and none of them would try to argue that Mike Tyson has the exact same capabilities as Stephen Hawking and vice-versa. That was not intended by the phrase “all men are created equal.”

You must appreciate, first, that English is an evolving language. Devolving for the last couple generations, actually. Some words have changed meanings, while others have lost certain nuances, and what was as obvious back then as the nose on your face is now in question, or even flat-out denied. What didn’t even need explanation to the average layman in the 18th Century is beyond the reckoning of the dumbed-down Useful Idiots of today.

Secondly, you must appreciate that the constitutional republic in America is utterly unique in world history. Whether monarchies, sultanates, or empires, the governments  of the world had predominantly been formed upon the premise that the people in the ruling class are inherently superior to the serfs, peasants, and other citizens. Yes, there were anomalies like Iceland, and even the British flirted with the idea of individual rights, but most of the human race was conditioned to believe that;

1. Only the “superior” people in the ruling class had rights.
2. A person was born into their station. Never mind that every noble and royal line could trace its lineage back to a commoner who simply was a talented leader.
3. “Inferior” people (subjects) in the lower societal classes basically belonged to the royalty and nobility, to be used however their betters saw fit.
4. Whatever a subject earned or made or inherited ultimately belonged to their betters, and could be confiscated if some fat cat wanted it (similar to how the Democrats and their IRS enforcers operate today).
5. A subject’s life was not their own. A king or queen could sacrifice them at any time in a war, show trial, or royal temper tantrum.
6. If you wanted to build houses or repair shoes, but your lord or lady wanted you to clean out sewers instead, for whatever reason, then you cleaned out the sewers. And liked it.

The Founders had a radical idea: that every man was a free moral agent with the same opportunity to accept salvation from their Creator. They believed that government should serve people–not the other way around–by protecting the individual rights endowed to each man by virtue of being a creation of God. Nobody had more or better rights simply because they were born to a certain family. All were blessed by God and accountable to God. What they earned belonged to them; they were free to make their own decisions; and they owed their lives to no earthly king.

This concept of individual rights was not popular, even in a Great Britain which had grown increasingly liberal* since the Magna Carta.

The Founders bothered to spell out their beliefs precisely because they were so idiosyncratic in a world where most people accepted the idea that those born to a “higher station” should rule, and law should hang on their every whim and fancy. Americans rejected the notion that anyone was owed anything by someone else simply by virtue of who they were born to (so much for Affirmative Action).

Contrary to either revisionist narrative you’re likely to hear, the Founding Fathers were neither white supremacists, nor egalitarians of the Baby Boomer stripe.

The word “equal” was used not to imply that every single man has the same exact capabilities, but to mean that nobody is actually born to a “higher station,” giving them the right to dictate when another man should live or die, to make their decisions for them, or to take for themselves the ownership of human beings that only God can rightfully claim. All men are equally accountable to God, and under His authority, subject to the same self-evident laws and endowed with the same unalienable rights.

*I use the word “liberal” to convey the word’s actual meaning. I do not use it in the Newspeak context it is so mindlessly used today.