What is America? As noted in my first article, a prior question needs to be asked: what was America intended to be by its Founders? CNN’s Dana Bash, upset by a comment from President Trump, announced, “CNN does not hate our country.” Well, that depends entirely, 100%, on what she means by “our country,” i.e., the answer to the question, “What is America?” We’ll consider CNN’s emotions toward America in subsequent analysis.
The principles America was founded upon, the intentions for the country as stated by our Founders, are proclaimed in the “Declaration of Independence” (1776) and embodied in the Constitution of 1789. I started analyzing that in my first article. A summary follows.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” The Founders believed “truth” exists and much of it was “self-evident,” that rational, reasonable, intelligent people could understand and know. Is that America today?
What are some of these “self-evident truths?” “That all men are created…” Everyone, men and women, is the product of a Creator. To our Founders, there is a God, and He created us. Is that the “zeitgeist” of America today? Well, I think it isn’t an especially popular view on the Left, and I don’t think I’m mistaken about that.
But to continue:
3. “…all men are created EQUAL…” Created equal. Now, what did our Founders mean by this? It needs some examination, for if there is one “truth” that is definitely NOT “self-evident,” it is that all men are equal. Some are tall, some are short. Some are thin, some are obese. Some are intelligent, some are…not so. Some—very few—can throw a baseball like Nolan Ryan or quarterback a football team like Tom Brady, and I think it’s fair to say we are not all equal in those abilities. I wish my bank account were equal to Elon Musk’s, but it isn’t and surely never will be. Thus, if “all men are created equal” is a “self-evident truth,” then the Founders must have had something specific in mind, something not readily discernible by a casual observation of humankind. What were they talking about?
One answer can be grasped from the historical context—the “zeitgeist”—in which the Founders existed. They grew up in a world where, for hundreds of thousands of years, people socially were not considered equal. By this, I mean lords and peasants. Such a “hierarchy” has been the most common social order, nearly everywhere on earth, and for nearly as long as humanity has existed. Because humans are NOT equal in talent, intelligence, ability, will, determination, and a thousand other ways, there has always been, in human societies, those who used some of their superior skills to rise to the top, either financially or politically, and often both. As this situation developed over long periods, it became the standing order in most societies. And the guy with the biggest army eventually got to call himself “King,” or “Emperor,” or some such title, and those not quite so powerful, but richer than the slobs below them, became his “nobility.” The rest of the poor suckers were peasants or slaves. That was, by far, the most common social order in human history until recent times. It was the world of America’s Founding Fathers. It does still exist. I think some in America would love to return to it.
Not only were the King and His Court richer and more powerful than you, but in this social order, they were BETTER than you. The ruler convinced the masses he ruled by God’s decree—“divine right monarchy. I’m king because God made me king. He chose me, so that means I’m superior to you.” It wasn’t just Europe that did that; in China, they called it the “Mandate of Heaven.” Same thing. Superior and inferior. “Know thy place, knave.”
"NO!” Thomas Jefferson and the American Founding Fathers shouted. “All men are created EQUAL.” In God’s eyes, no one is “superior” to anyone else; no one is given by God a right to be king; no one is born with a mandate to rule. In this sense, all humans are equal before their Creator.
Folks, this is incredibly revolutionary. THIS is the “American Revolution.” Overturning thousands of years of human hierarchy, a system entrenched nearly all over the world, and overturning it so successfully that, in today’s world, only in a few tinpot, backwoods hellholes can dictators rise to power with their nobility and absolutism. America’s Founding Fathers (as we shall see in a subsequent article) argued that government comes, not by divine right, but only from the consent of the governed. Why?
Because God created all men equal and did not create some people “better” than others (socially and politically) and thus with a right to rule, the Founders would never have argued that “all men are equal” with the same talents and abilities; they would have been fools to do so and they knew it. Free people will never have equal outcomes.
But we ARE equal because you are not born with a right to rule me. You rule only by my consent. And if I don’t like the way you do it, I’ll kick your backside out of power and get somebody who will serve me better because that is the ONLY reason I chose you as “governor”—to SERVE me, not to RULE me.
The American Revolution, folks.
Is that America today?
I’m not sure Barack Obama and the Democratic Party believe that. And Republicans, not a few. And the Deep State and CNN, not any.
“Shut up, peasant, and do what you’re told.”
What is America, indeed?
But the Founders had a little more in mind when they said, “All men are created equal,” and Jefferson actually said so in the next couple of clauses of the Declaration. That will be the subject of my next installment.
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