{"id":17889,"date":"2015-07-04T00:01:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T05:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=17889"},"modified":"2015-07-05T09:43:48","modified_gmt":"2015-07-05T14:43:48","slug":"wapo-editorial-the-declarations-dual-traditions-broad-equality-and-equality-for-whites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=17889","title":{"rendered":"WaPo editorial: The Declaration\u2019s dual traditions: Broad equality, and equality for whites"},"content":{"rendered":"

WaPo editorial: The Declaration\u2019s dual traditions: Broad equality, and equality for whites<\/a> by Danielle Allen: <\/p>\n

This Fourth of July, like the preceding weeks, will be painful, following the Charleston massacre \u2014 a devastating example of the lofty ideal of human equality\u2019s failure to take root in a human heart. Many would say, as many have said to me, that taking the ideals of the Declaration of Independence too seriously is a mistake, because the men who signed it didn\u2019t. These folks say that I should be more clear-eyed about revolutionary hypocrisy. I counter that we should be more clear-eyed about how the Declaration launched two political traditions in this country: one for broad equality, and one for an equality limited to whites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, many of the “truths [we hold] to be self-evident” become a part of the 1789 Constitution and the 1791 Bill of Rights. The hypocrisy “that all men are created equal …” meant white men; not blacks, and women were somewhere in between. As a school child reading that, I didn’t know, and wasn’t told all the history. After all, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner who enslaved his own children he had with Sally Hemmings<\/a>. In addition, Jefferson was also found to have written in detail on the economics of slave women and how their existence helped us win the Revolution.<\/p>\n

And remember, prior to the civil rights amendments, blacks were 3\/5ths of a person. (Thirteenth Amendment, 1865; Fourteenth Amendment, 1868; Fifteenth Amendment, 1870)<\/p>\n

The declaration also wasn’t kind to Indians, from whom we stole land.<\/p>\n

I used to wax poetic about the Declaration of Independence. Like everybody else, I pick and choose the parts I want to quote. The parts to keep swept under the rug are.<\/p>\n

See also NPR: Scrapped Declaration Of Independence Passage Denounced Slavery<\/a>. Jefferson wrote extensively on ending slavery, including in the proposed Virginia Constitution, but he was limiting it to children born in 1800. I guess he was a political realist. What he believed and did v. what he wrote still troubles me in its hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

See also WaPo: The Volokh Conspiracy: What the Declaration of Independence Really Claimed<\/a> by Randy Barnett<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WaPo editorial: The Declaration\u2019s dual traditions: Broad equality, and equality for whites by Danielle Allen: This Fourth of July, like the preceding weeks, will be painful, following the Charleston massacre \u2014 a devastating example of the lofty ideal of human … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17889"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17932,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889\/revisions\/17932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}