Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

Resource Summary

The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot haev freedom without equality. It is out of an egalitarian commitment that a people grows -- a people that is capable of protecting us all collectively, and each of us individually, from domination. If the Delcration can stake a claim to freedom, it is only because it is so clear-eyed about the fact that people's strengths resides in its equality.

The Declaration also conveys another lesson of paramount importance. It is this: language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence grasped the power of words. This reveals itself in the laborious processes by which they brought the Declaration, and their revolution, into being. It shows itself forcefully, of course, in the text's own eloquence.

Read more in Our Declaration: A Reading of The Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality.