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WEEK OF NOVEMBER 2, 2025
** This Week on Equality
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** Are We Self-Evidently Equal? ([link removed])
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John Adams’s 1776 letter to Patrick Henry captures the Founders’ audacious aim: not just liberty, but a “more equal Liberty” spread as widely as possible. The 17th installment of our 24-part A Call to Liberty series, explores how the natural rights tradition remains central to a free and self-governing society. In his lead essay, Andrew Lang argues that equal liberty wasn’t finished in 1776—and still isn’t. It’s a living project that demands steady tending and grateful stewardship. As we revisit Adams’s words, we’re reminded that liberty’s promise is not a finished inheritance but an ongoing duty; one that each generation must learn anew.
Read Now ([link removed])
** How might John Adam’s vision of a “more equal Liberty” challenge us to think anew about the relationship between freedom and fairness today and what it means to inherit the founders’ promise of “a more equal Liberty”?
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** “The master not only governs the slave without his consent; but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only is self government." — Abraham Lincoln
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By revisiting the American founders’ understanding of natural equality, we gain perspective on the enduring link between liberty and human dignity. The nation’s history reveals both moments when the principle of equality expanded freedom’s reach and times when it was obscured by privilege or passion. Tracing these shifts helps us see more clearly what is at stake when the equal rights of individuals yield to group identity or majority will. This week’s featured resources consider how recovering the Declaration’s vision of equality can renew the moral foundation of self-government and sustain the promise of liberty for all.
** Articles
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** Equality Before Egalitarianism ([link removed])
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James Hankins, Law & Liberty ([link removed])
The modern understanding of equality has drifted from the older conception that once harmonized liberty and moral order. By revisiting classical and early republican traditions, Hankins invites readers to consider whether genuine equality is best secured not through perpetual social leveling, but through the cultivation of virtue, merit, and shared responsibility within a free society.
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** Anything But Compromising ([link removed])
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Christa Dierksheide, A Call to Liberty ([link removed])
The Declaration of Independence began not as a timeless manifesto but as a wartime document meant to unite a divided people against empire. This essay traces how that urgent act of mobilization gradually evolved into a broader and continuing pursuit of equality, as successive generations sought to reconcile the founding’s imperfect beginnings with the enduring promise of liberty and self-government.
** Equality, Wealth, and Power and the Need for Civil Government in Adam Smith ([link removed])
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Jimena Hurtado, Adam Smith Works ([link removed])
Political equality, Adam Smith argued, depends on institutions that balance liberty with justice in the face of inevitable economic inequality. This essay explores Smith’s idea of analytical egalitarianism, the view that all people share the same moral and rational capacities, and shows how sound governance can preserve equal participation and the rule of law even as wealth and power diverge.
** Democracy's Opportunity Cost ([link removed])
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Janet Bufton, EconLib ([link removed])
Liberal democracy depends on citizens who can participate meaningfully, even amid the demands of modern life. This review considers how political institutions might lower the costs of engagement, ensuring that self-government remains inclusive and representative without turning civic participation into a full-time pursuit.
** The Long History of Equality ([link removed])
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Brian Smith, Law & Liberty ([link removed])
John M. Ellis traces how the modern belief in human equality—once unimaginable in earlier centuries—emerged slowly from a world divided by fear, conquest, and hierarchy. By following this transformation from 1500 to today, he argues that our conviction that “we are one family” is a hard-won moral achievement of Western thought, rooted in faith, philosophy, and the gradual expansion of sympathy across peoples and cultures.
** Podcasts
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** Yuval Levin on Burke, Paine, and the Great Debate ([link removed])
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EconTalk ([link removed])
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** From Equality to DEI—and Back Again? ([link removed])
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Law & Liberty ([link removed])
** Videos
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** Gordon Wood on the Declaration as our Aspiration and Ideal ([link removed])
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Liberty Fund ([link removed])
As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Gordon Wood reflects on its enduring meaning as both a founding charter and a moral guide. He explains that the Declaration remains vital because it enshrines the ideal of human equality—an aspiration that continues to unite Americans by reminding them of what the nation strives to become.
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