Equality essay 01/24/2005

So, this is something I've been working on... I'd appreciate any feedback you'd give me, positive or negative. If you think there's anything I'm missing, let me know that too.... Just click the email button over there --->

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All men and woman are created equal. Everybody is the equal of everyone else. Seems a given, doesn't it? It's one of the first things mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, a document which sits as the foundation of our country.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."

Evident: adjective, clear to the vision or understanding
Self-evident: adjective, evident without proof or reasoning

The idea that everyone is created equal is undebatable, according to this statement. It's a fact, an idea that the founding fathers found un-arguable. And they founded a country on that fact.
What's interesting to me, is that when the Constitution was drafted, nowhere in the document does it guarantee the equality of it's citizens. In fact the only time the document guarantees any of the "unalienable" rights that the Declaration used as the foundation of our country occur in an ammendment.

Ammendent XIV - All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The framers of the Constitution were smart. They knew that the country would continue to change, and they allowed for that in the formation of their government with ammendments. As our nation continually evolves, they created a system of government which was able to handle it.
But it disturbs me greatly that the equality of every American citizen isn't guaranteed in the Constitution. Maybe because it's a given, the authors figured it would be merely repetitive. Maybe because there was already debate over the issue of slaves, they felt that guaranteeing the equality of every American citizen would cause more trouble than it was worth.

Of course, there's always gray areas. Maybe equality was one of them. Our country has certainly gone through interesting strides in the area of equality. It took a Constitutional Ammendment to free the slaves, another one to allow them to vote, and still another one to allow women to vote. These ammendments, unfortunately, never explicitly state that ex-slaves and women are the equal of the white-male majority who made all the rules for so many centuries. Which means, unfortunately, that there is, at least semantically, room to argue that they aren't equal.
According to the supreme law of the land.

And yet, the foundation of our country states that all people are created equal. It's a given.
Who is going to argue that the Declaration of Independence was wrong?

So, here's the problem: there is current legislation being discussed in Congress which, if passed, would state, quite explicitly, that not all people are created equal. But the Declaration says otherwise.

It seems to me that any statement that directly goes against the Declaration, the foundation of America, is an un-American statement. You follow?
The Declaration of Independence should be used as a litmus test for all laws to pass through. If the law is at odds with the Declaration, then it is at odds with the ideals our country was founded on, which means that it is ultimately at odds with our country itself. Un-American.

In that case, it should be impossible to create a law, or even an ammendment to the Constitution of America that is un-American in spirit, which an ammendment stating, in the fine print, that not everyone is equal certainly is.