Equality at the Core of the Declaration

Danielle Allen's (Princeton) just pubished her new book Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality right in time for your own annual reading of the Declaration--today, July the Fourth.

Allen's book is a meditation on the Declaration that starts with her own teaching of the document and moves through history, philosophy, culture, and, of course, a close reading of the text.  More importantly, it's an argument that equality is at the Declaration's core--a point often missed in today's liberty-laden reading of the document (and today's liberty-laden politics). 

[The Declaration] makes an argument about political equality. . . . [I]t makes a cogent philosophical case for political equality, a case that democratic citizens desperately need to understand. . . .

The purpose of democracy is to empower individual citizens and give them sufficient control over their lives to protect themselves from domination.  In their ideal form, democracies empower each and all such that none can dominate any of the others, nor any one group, another group of citizens. . . .

The point of political equality is not merely to secure spaces free from domination but also to engage all members of a community equally in the work of creating and constantly re-creating that community.  Political equality is equal political empowerment.

Allen was recently in the news for her argument that there's really no period after "Happiness" in the text, despite its inclusion in the official transcript of the document at NARA.  That's important, because without a period the link between the rights to "life, liberty, and happiness" and the purpose of government is even yet closer.  That is: without a period, it's even clearer that government is "instituted among men" in order to secure our rights to "life, liberty, and happiness." 

You can hear Allen on the Diane Rehm show yesterday.  Here's WaPo's book review.