The man who wrote it owned other human beings. The rich Anglo-Saxon males who signed it believed themselves superior to women, Catholics, Jews, other Europeans, Native Americans, blacks, Asians, and poor white males. It contained no development strategy, no announced intention for poverty reduction, and no nation-building Power Point presentation. For many decades afterward, anyone who took it literally would have been seen as crazy.
Yet the principles the Declaration gave in two sentences have done more than anything else for both liberty and development in the 234 years since that day.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Happy birthday, Declaration, and thank you.
11 Comments
wow…thanks for the historical self-criticism, instead of reproducing historical romanticism. Happy Independence day for you!
Great Post! Thank you!
I thought this was interesting:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38068227/ns/us_news-life/
Happy Independence Day!
As my husband mentioned, Jefferson taught his slaves to read and that was illegal. Before I go all sensitive on your remark I want you to know I enjoy your books and wish to highlight your belief that people do not realize how important economic freedom is to political freedom.
Now! Jefferson is one of my heroes and I am dismayed by his attacks from both the left and the right. Recently, the right got their way in Texas schoolbooks by taking out references of Jefferson, along with the virtues of the Enlightenment itself in a philosophical context. Why is this important to me? Because Jefferson’s beliefs have a strong underpinning to the hopes of our political and economic futures which are still very much threatened by current economic realities.
Forgive the impudence on this holiest of days, but could explain what exactly these principles have done for development?
Happy July 4th to all Americans!
I believe this statement is half-true half-false. I don’t think that “all men (or people) are created equal,” because it is this diversity in knowledge, capabilities, race, language, that makes individuals to interact with others to generate progress. Thus, it is against nature to try to force human beings to be equal—or to have a government that tries to make them be equals.
However, I do believe that individuals “are endowed with certain unalienable rights,” including life, freedom, and the pursue of happiness.
@ Harold and Tony
The US constitution is a “living tree” document that has everything to do with development. I will present the argument from the Canadian perspective which is written differently but makes the point more clearly, I think. The reference is to the so-called ‘persons case’ in the 1920s when women were ruled to hold the same political rights as men – ie. they, like men, became persons under the law.
The ruling goes as follows:
“The British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural limits. The object of the Act was to grant a Constitution to Canada. Like all written constitutions it has been subject to development through usage and convention.
Their Lordships do not conceive it to be the duty of this Board — it is certainly not their desire — to cut down the provisions of the Act by a narrow and technical construction, but rather to give it a large and liberal interpretation so that the Dominion to a great extent, but within certain fixed limits, may be mistress in her own house, as the provinces to a great extent, but within certain fixed limits, are mistresses in theirs….
and further on:
“…exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours. And to those who would ask why the word “person” should include females, the obvious answer is, why should it not?”
Jefferson et al was a person of his time with the exclusion of certain groups from the definition of “men” but the document he had a hand in creating had within it the wherewithal to evolve as times change. It is the same with the BNA Act. If you wish to destroy a society, then you freeze it by blocking evolutionary change by restricting access to information, expression of opinion and freedom to pursue your own opportunities. (Try reading Amartya Sen: Development as Freedom).
Taking the ‘narrow and technical’ approach blocks development. examples today are many ranging from Saudi Arabia and how its religious leaders interpret the Holy Koran to in development the gender and equity activists who demand equality of results rather than equality of opportunity.
N.B.: By way of info to the US readers: “liberal” in Canada and elsewhere under the British tradition is a positive word representing intellectual and political freedom as in when we are taught in school: “the US is the world’s first great liberal democracy”.
@ Dan Kayba
Two things:
1.) I don’t deny the Constitution has many aspects related with development.
2.) What is your point again? b/c I didn’t get it.
@ Harold
The point is the equality of opportunity for everyone to participate in public and economic life and thereby realise their respective enhanced capabilities for their own and the greater public good.
@Bill The man who wrote it liberated more people than any before him. The rich Anglo-Saxon males who signed it put at risk their lives, their fortunes and sacred honor, giving freedom immediately to Catholics, Jews, other Europeans, Asians and poor white males. Decades afterwards, people who took it literally poured out their blood by the hundred-thousand, making it true for blacks as well.
(keep on being snarky; I enjoy it!)
@Ana The founders had every motivation to set up an old-style monarchy and ruled as the leaders of every generation before them did. Instead, they gave their would-be subjects the franchise, and then guaranteed them guns so that they could defend it from any would-be monarch. Call it romanticism if you like, but I know of no more honest or selfless government builders in history. Do you?
@tony In the Wealth of Nations (also born in 1776), Smiths suggests a “system of perfect liberty” is important for wealth creation. For the last two centuries or so, most of the wealth in the modern world (which is a lot as I understand it) was built on that assumption. Do you think freedom and economic growth are divorced?
Great post! God bless America (from Kenya)!
Forgive my ignorance – I am neither an American nor an economist – however, the connection between the statement and development seems dubious. It seems to me that America’s development can be explained by the systematic removal of native races, transferrence of European culture, which in turn benefited by cross-continental (Europe being amid Asia, Africa and the Middle East) interaction over millennia and a common rule of law applicable to all recognized members of 1700s US society. I don’t mean to sound political, but it sounds like that’s what history seems to show.
One Trackback
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by William Easterly and others. William Easterly said: The Declaration: how history has a sense of humor http://bit.ly/a2x8K0 [...]