Saving the Declaration

How to Think about the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration By Harry V. Jaffa Carolina Academic, 183 pp., $12.75; paper $5 What is the status of the Declaration of Independence in the American political tradition? More specifically, is the proposition “that all men are created equal” central to that tradition? And if so, in what sense are men “equal”?

In this collection (consisting mostly of three long essays), as in his previous books, Harry Jaffa is concerned to redeem equality, generally a bad word among conservatives, as a central value of the American regime. Far from agreeing (with, e.g., Tocqueville) that it coexists tensely with liberty, Jaffa argues that equality is merely another aspect of liberty. He means, of course, equality “rightly understood”—which is to say: as Locke understood it, as Jefferson and Madison understood it, as Lincoln understood it.

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Joseph Sobran

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Declaration of Independence

Alexis de Tocqueville

How to Think about the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Cerebration By Harry V. Jaffa Carolina Academic, 183 pp., $12.75; paper $5 What is the status of the Declaration of Independence in the American political tradition? More specifically, is the proposition “that all men are created equal” central to that tradition? And if so, in what sense are men “equal”?

In this collection (consisting mostly of three long essays), as in his previous books, Harry Jaffa is concerned to redeem equality, generally a bad word among conservatives, as a central value of the American regime. Far from agreeing (with, e.g., Tocqueville) that it coexists tensely with liberty, Jaffa argues that equality is merely another aspect of liberty. He means, of course, equality “rightly understood”—which is to say: as Locke understood it, as Jefferson and Madison understood it, as Lincoln understood it.