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THE WEEK OF FEBRUARY 01, 2026
** This Week on Equality and the American Promise
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** The Declaration’s Elusive Promise ([link removed])
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“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” Few words have shaped the American conscience more powerfully or more controversially. In this installment of A Call to Liberty, “The Declaration’s Elusive Promise” by Bradley Rebeiro explores the tension between the Declaration’s universal claim to human equality and the compromises that marked its founding. Tracing debates from the founding era through modern critiques, the essay asks whether the Declaration was a false promise, an unfinished one, or a moral standard entrusted to future generations. Drawing on figures from Jefferson and Lincoln to Douglass and King, it argues that the Declaration’s enduring power lies not in its immediate application, but in the truths it proclaimed and the obligation to fulfill them.
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** What does America’s long tradition of judging itself by its ideals reveal about its capacity for reform and renewal?
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** “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”
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** – Abraham Lincoln
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Equality has never been merely a slogan in American life, but a principle that tests a nation’s character and shapes its moral imagination. This week’s newsletter returns to the Declaration’s claim that “all men are created equal,” tracing how it has been defended, contested, and refined through arguments about slavery, economic life, and the responsibilities of self-government. The selections explore the relationship between natural rights, social practice, and the continuing task of securing liberty in a free society.
** Articles
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** America's Exceptional Guilt ([link removed])
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Jason Ross, Law & Liberty ([link removed])
Revisiting the 1619 Project through the lens of William Lloyd Garrison and his “neo-Garrisonian” heirs, this piece shows how critiques of the founding often depend on taking America’s stated ideals of equality with utmost seriousness. Rather than reducing the nation’s story to an unredeemable original sin, it argues for a more durable American exceptionalism rooted in free discussion, honest self-critique, and the work of reforming practice to meet principle.
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** Adam Smith on Slavery ([link removed])
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Jack Russell Weinstein, Adam Smith Works ([link removed])
Smith doubted that politics, religion, or even moral sentiment alone could end slavery, and instead turned to sympathy, economic argument, and the slow work of historical change to explain both why abolition is so difficult and why it remains possible.
** The Secret History of the Dismal Science. Part II. Brotherhood, Trade, and the Negro Question ([link removed])
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David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart, Econlib ([link removed])
At the height of the struggle over slavery and empire, the language of universal brotherhood became a powerful moral claim. Through the clash between Thomas Carlyle and his critics, the authors show how classical economists drew on Adam Smith to defend equality by grounding human dignity in the capacities for language, exchange, and choice.
** Slavery Gave Us Double-Entry Bookkeeping? ([link removed])
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Hans Eicholz, Law & Liberty ([link removed])
When a single word is made to carry an entire moral verdict, the first casualty is often clarity. Arguing that Matthew Desmond’s account of “American capitalism” in the 1619 Project depends on shifting definitions and selective examples, this essay calls for closer attention to evidence, historical context, and the difference between condemning slavery and explaining the origins of modern economic life.
** Tocqueville and Equality ([link removed])
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Filippo Sabetti,[link removed] Library of Liberty ([link removed])
Tocqueville’s idea of “equality of conditions” offers a valuable lens for today’s debates about wealth, policy, and the social foundations of self-government. Bringing contemporary arguments into conversation, this piece suggests that both concentrated prosperity and long-term dependence can erode the habits and opportunities that sustain broad equality, and it points readers back to Tocqueville’s reflections on pauperism as an enduring challenge for free societies.
** Podcasts
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** Do All Creatures, Great and Small, and Made From Silicon, Have Rights? ([link removed])
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EconTalk ([link removed])
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** Charles Murray on Dignity and the American Dream ([link removed])
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The Future of Liberty ([link removed])
** Videos
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** Gordon Wood on Equality in Early America ([link removed])
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Liberty Fund ([link removed])
Gordon Wood emphasizes that the Declaration’s promise of equality is best understood as an enduring aspiration and moral standard, not simply a record of founding-era practice.
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Copyright 2026 Liberty Fund. All rights reserved.
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