Created Equal

Benjamin Martin: May I sit with you?
Charlotte Selton: It's a free country. Or at least it will be.
--The Patriot

Jefferson et al observed various self-evident truths--first among them being that all people are created equal. Given that, in social contexts, equality can mean either equality of treatment or equality of condition, which meaning was on the minds of our founding ancestors?

Their statement that people are created equal  provides a good sense of their thrust. We can reason that they are not talking about equality of condition. Because variation is axiomatic in nature and under God, individuals are created with different characteristics both physical and mental that provide for various talents and capacities for achievement. People are also born into quite diverse social situations. To claim that people are created with equality of condition is not only not self-evident but easy to disprove.

It is also instructive that Jefferson et al state that people are created equal rather than can be made equal. They list no subsequent self-evident truth that the interests of some must be forcibly compromised for the benefit of others via programs of leveling.

Instead, they state that all are endowed with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that governments are instituted to protect those rights. The only way that individuals can pursue their interests in unencumbered manners is if people are treated equally under the rule of government. Any law that grants privilege to a subset of individuals, regardless of socioeconomic condition, violates the unalienable rights of others because people are being treated unequally.

It can only be construed that Jefferson et al mean equality of treatment--equality under the law.