Tribalism is pulling us apart. Our deepest commonality will pull us together.

It was an unseasonably mild summer day July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia when the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence. After years of tolerating what were seen as unjust laws and taxes imposed on the North American colonies by Great Britain, people living in what would become the United States had had enough and were ready to break away as a free nation. 

The document’s primary author Thomas Jefferson wrote: “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.” 

With this line, Jefferson — widely considered to be amongst the most intelligent men in United States history — essentially established the foundational logic supporting America’s action to leave. 

In his estimation, the equality of all humans requires no proving because it is, ultimately, self-evident. 

Hence, if the inherent rights of men are ever threatened or stifled, it is wholly justified to do what is necessary to defend those rights. 

Of course, being the slave owner he was, Jefferson fell glaringly short of living up to the lofty ideal he espoused in the Declaration. 

Because the principle itself, outside of the man who wrote it, stands so potently on its own, most civil liberty battles fought since the Declaration’s passing have been entrenched with Jefferson’s words of equality. From segregation to women’s suffrage to the LGBTQ movement, this idea of equality has been the philosophical bedrock supporting numerous human rights battles for hundreds of years. 

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