During his Gettysburg address, Abraham Lincoln characterized the US as a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Equality, he reminded his audience, was at the center of our national identity. And yet today, unsettled questions remain.
In Springfield, Illinois President Lincoln attempted to answer two questions that arose from his Gettysburg speech:
- “In which respects are we equal?
- “What are the practical consequences of our commitment to equality?”
Lincoln was good at answering his own questions, as William A. Galston writes in the WSJ.
The claim that we are all created equal gestured toward the theological proposition that we are all made in the image of God. This means that we are morally equal, of equal worth.
No one—and no government—can rightly act as though some of us are worth more than others. Policies that give the interests of some individuals greater weight than others violate this principle.
The principle of equality naturally morphs into civic and political principles: “Neither God nor nature gave anyone the right to rule another.”
Thomas Jefferson, although a slave holder, wrote only 10 days before his death: our inalienable rights mean that “the mass of mankind hasn’t been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of god.”
The Consent of the People
This bedrock civic equality is why all legitimate government rests on the consent of the people. During the Revolution era and in fact long after, “the principle of civic equality was not completely realized in practice, continues Mr. Galston.
Most women and free African-Americans couldn’t vote, and neither could white men who didn’t meet their state’s property qualifications.
The principle of civic equality exerted constant pressure on these restrictions, and over time they were dismantled. Still, it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was enacted and enforced—nearly two centuries after our nation’s birth—that this principle was fully realized in practice.
Equality did not arrive easily. The late historian Gordon Wood shows in his book “The Radicalism of the American Revolution” (1991), equality principles gradually overcame social hierarchies.
For example, in the 1770s, the legitimacy of aristocracy was still widely recognized. Half a century later, it had all but vanished.
In its place emerged an instinctive belief in social equality. Any American could look any other in the eye and say: Even if you happen to have more money or education or power, I’m as good as you are.
Thomas Jefferson took this belief one step further. “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor,” he said, and “the former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter.”
The common sense of ordinary people, Jefferson believed, is on a par (at least) with that of experts and educated elites.
Social equality has dominated America since the 1820s, and “it lies at the heart of populist uprisings that have occurred throughout American history.”
Mr. Galston writes that social equality lies at the “heart of populist uprisings.” That they are part of American history.
When one group of Americans seems to be claiming superiority, the others resent it and push back. Rural Americans hate being regarded as “hicks” by urban Americans.
(Remember how Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment went over?)
People with modest levels of education often feel that highly educated Americans look down on them. When experts claim that their views should dominate policy because they know more, the nonexpert majority usually insists, in a Jeffersonian spirit, that it is equally as competent to make the moral judgments that underlie public policy.
When people who have accumulated great wealth argue that they are more qualified to lead than those who haven’t, ordinary Americans resist on grounds that rich Americans cannot understand what it means to live from paycheck to paycheck.
William A. Galston believes that “a society dominated by the sentiment of social equality, hierarchical claims are always on probation.”
When generals or economists or public-health experts or veteran politicians make big mistakes, insurgents can always oppose them by appealing to the common sense of ordinary Americans—and by doing so, they will usually win.
