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Thomas Jefferson and Equality: Making America

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“All men are created equal…” So says the Declaration of Independence, eloquently penned by Thomas Jefferson. But how do we reconcile the obvious contradiction between Jefferson’s words about freedom and his actions as a slave owner? Dinesh D’Souza answers this question.

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Script:

In one sentence Thomas Jefferson not only laid the foundation stone for a new nation he also set that new nation, the United States of America, on a path we still follow today. 

His affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” may be the most influential words ever written this side of the Bible. 

The US Constitution ratified a little more than a decade later, was guided by those words.  Subsequent amendments, including the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, granting “equal rights under the law,” seem, for all their grandeur, to be restatements of the equality principle in Jefferson’s original Declaration.

Yet Jefferson is controversial today because he embodies the contradictions of the founders.  Indeed, progressive scholars say, he was the worst of them, the most hypocritical, because the very man who insisted that “all men are created equal” not only permitted slavery, but himself owned slaves.  

Did Jefferson not see the glaring contradiction between his principles and his practices, between the principles and practices of the infant American nation?  According to Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored the notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision affirming slavery in the territories, neither Jefferson nor the other founders could have seriously meant that “all men are created equal.” They didn’t act on the principle, so they couldn’t have believed it.

Modern progressive jurists such as Thurgood Marshall, as well as historians such as John Hope Franklin, have, again with an irony that should not go unnoticed, adopted the Taney view.  In Franklin’s words, the founders “betrayed the ideals to which they gave lip service.”  They wrote, “eloquently at one moment for the brotherhood of man and in the next moment denied it to their black brothers.”

No defense of Jefferson or the American founding is possible that agrees with this assessment.  How, then, can Jefferson and the founding itself be vindicated against this most serious charge?  

For the answer let’s look again at the Declaration and what comes immediately after the statement “all men are created equal” — that governments derive their legitimacy from the “consent of the governed.”  This is the democracy principle and it is no less important, no less foundational, than the equality principle.

With this is in mind, let’s turn to the practical choice faced by the founders. Progressives say they should have outlawed slavery in the original Constitution. Yet slavery was legal in all the states that sent representatives to Philadelphia in 1789.  

How could these representatives outlaw slavery without the consent of the people in their states?  Were they expected to do so by overriding popular consent?  In that case, they would be overthrowing democracy itself, before it was even introduced as the bedrock of the new Constitution! 

Furthermore, as everyone in Philadelphia knew at the time, many states would not have joined a union that forbade slavery at the outset. Perhaps a few would have done so, but no more. 

Had those who opposed slavery held firm on the issue, the union would have consisted of a handful of states, or it would have remained a utopian idea affirmed by a group of high-minded founders—but they would be founders… of nothing.

As Jefferson himself said about the slavery issue, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.”

It is not reasonable—in fact, it is downright obtuse—to ask of statesmen to do what they manifestly cannot do.  It is only reasonable to ask them to make the best choices available to them under the circumstances—to hold the wolf, in Jefferson’s own terms, until he can safely be let go.  

In Abraham Lincoln’s view, the American founders did just that. They temporarily allowed slavery in practice, while constructing a framework based on antislavery principles.

For the complete script as well as FACTS & SOURCES, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/thomas-jefferson-and-equality-making-america

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36 Comments

  2. Ok. You got this all wrong. In Thomas Jefferson,s time. All people lived among their own kind. Jefferson ment that all people were created equal among their own kind. They did not have today's insanity of forced racial integration…all of which is destroying everything they did for their people. Their posterity.

  4. equilibrium market comes from equality 1 in logos is equality and 1 in logos born and reborn from justice bed peace 1 in logos first to every first growth of economy/law of house/oikos nomos.

    r we realize it?

    ☆back to light's 2:5☆

  6. Freeing slaves would've been an attack on democracy, only if the enslaved were not people! Hello?! There's no consideration of all the enslaved people who were against slavery. Fewer states with true democracy is better than a large union that supports enslavement.

  7. Dinesh is essentially arguing that the practice of slavery was necessary for the development of democracy. Hog mog! And that Jefferson and the “founding fathers” were reluctant planters who only engaged in slavery as a strategy for building long-term democracy. That’s absolutely ludicrous. The Virginia planter class engaged in slavery because it was economically, socially and politically beneficial to do so! Periodt. Why would TJ, a 3rd generation Virginia planter, who was part of the Virginia planter class think or have values any different than the men of his fellow planter class? Conservatives are real big on individual responsibility except when it comes to TJ. TJ could’ve took personal responsibility and divested of “his property” ( some of which were his own children), compensated and relocated his free laborers but he chose not to; He could’ve condemned slavery and became an abolitionist but he chose not for the same reasons Virginia planters chose not to.

  8. TJ was a political philosopher, a man of the enlightenment. Very well verse in Hobbes, Lock, Smith etc so why assume “all men are created equal” meant anymore or anything different than Hobbes “equality in a state of nature”? Doing so, dangerously distorts the meaning of the declaration to be some type of human rights document. It is a declararon of independence, not a declaration of equality.

  10. Thomas Jefferson penned, " all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." except for black people, Native Americans, women, Asian people, Mixed children of Thomas Jefferson, poor white men, Muslins, Jews, and anybody that don't look like him.

  13. Vermont was the first colony/state to abolish slavery in 1777, entirely due to "all men are created equal." The last New England state to abolish it was Connecticut in 1848, and Northern states were slowly writing laws to curtail salvery.

  14. The question nobody asks. In 1776 to, say, 1791 when all states had signed on to the Constitution- can anyone please name a country on the planet that had banished slavery? I'll wait.

    In reality, the argument is that America and its Founding Fathers were bad because…. well…. because they lived in a culture that was just like every other one at the time. Never mind that they were the first government leaders on the planet to seriously discuss, and seriously propose, to end slavery. Never mind that several of those pesky northern states were the first governments on the planet that ACTUALLY DID BANISH SLAVERY. Don't let the historical facts get in the way of a good, America-bashing narrative devoid of integrity.

    Thanks to Prager U for the video, and to user Rob who brought much more context and detail in his post. Well done.

  15. As a total Jefferson admirer this video is superb, but it only lists some of the great accomplishments by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a man of multiple achievements, and I suggest to anyone watching this video that you should plunge deeper into the life of Thomas Jefferson. As Jefferson's life, and accomplishments unfold before you, you will be so totally impressed with this man. Doctor G.W.

  18. https://youtu.be/jA2JmC2fQrk

    Leftism: Equity wherein all people are the same in income and living — serving the state as socialist slaves all made the same in worship of elites and their chosen socialist ideology. [Communism, Fascism, Islamism, and Feudalism.]

    Rightism: Equality wherein all people are equal in the eyes of the law — each having the same opportunities to learn and work and make the best lives for themselves according to their ability, determination , and conscientiousness.

  19. "All men are created equal" is just not a great idea. If truly believed and truly enforced, we'd be closer to communism than to liberty. Jefferson was just a liberal leftist of his time, and, like many liberals, he didn't practice what he preached.

  21. Progressives and Slavery-proponents have nothing to do with eachother. That's like saying I support abortion and eugenecits support some abortion therefore we support the same thing. Like the motivation is fundermentally diffrent, embedded in a different worldview and principles. The porgressives rightfully attac the moral integrety of the founders, as they acted againt there own principles. The slavery-proponents wanted slavery, they where just fine with the hypocricy of the founders, because to them that hypsicracy was true. To re visit the point, it's the same argumentation that the anti-abortion people make. 'The consitution couldn't possibly mean full equal rights to woman or that abridging ones persons right to there own self is slavery', because woman wear evidently not fully considered people/that personal property of ones person is apprently not understood as inherent. Just to point out what side is actually using the argumentation of the slavers.

  24. Then there was purportedly Jefferson's own legal quandary; as a Virginian landowner in debt, he couldn't free his slaves (which he inherited), until that law was changed years later.

  25. Isn't this channel all about republicanism, that the government should not let the majority trample the rights of the minority? Also there's some curious fuzziness on what exactly you're defending. The video starts out with insults that were applied to Jefferson – he was the worst of them, the most hypocritical, not only permitted slavery but himself owned slaves. You really only address one of those, that he permitted slavery. He could have freed his own slaves. Why can't we say he was bad for not doing that? Despite the fact that slavery was an institution in every state, voluntary manumission is in no way incompatible with the compromises they "had" to make. That's especially relevant in the Dredd Scott case which you handwaved away like it was nothing when in fact you yourself admitted Jefferson's hypocrisy was used as evidence in what is widely considered the worst Supreme Court decision in American history. And as a minor aside, the remark about how odd it is that progressive thinkers made the same conclusion as Taney is only odd if you're assuming Jefferson was in the right. If racists say "this guy is on our side," and anti-racists say "this guy is on the racists' side," that doesn't make them hypocritical. It just means "this guy" actually probably is on that side.

  27. Jefferson and Franklin are the greatest founders. Jefferson opposed slavery his entire life but all solutions to get rid of it had problems. Ultimately, Republicans had to fight for what’s right and stop the Democrats from continuing slavery.

  31. The fourteenth amendment did not grant equal rights under the law, the Constitution already did that, including the right to sell yourself into slavery if you so wish. The only reason for the Fourteenth Amendment was to make it impossible to ignore the equality of men. Unfortunately, it did nothing.

  33. Washington freed all his slaves upon his death in 1799, the only founder to do so. Jefferson did not free all his slaves when he died in 1826, he freed less than ten the rest were sold in estate sale. And unlike Jefferson it is no-where to be found that Washington suggested that blacks were inferior. Jefferson on the other hand in his "Notes on the State of Virginia" states that blacks are inferior to whites and natives.