When, in 1945, the animals of The Manor Farm staged a rebellion and drove Farmer Jones and his wife off the property — according to author George Orwell — they converted the farm into an animal-run ‘republic’ known by its new name, ‘Animal Farm’.
The pigs, who were generally more clever than the other animals, developed a set of commandments expressing the farm’s guiding political philosophy. From Orwell’s book, Animal Farm:
The Commandments were written on the tarred wall in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away. They read thusly:
THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.
It was very neatly written, and except that ‘friend’ was written ‘freind’ and one of the ‘S’s was the wrong way round, the spelling was correct all the way through. Snowball [the pig] read it aloud for the benefit of the others. All the animals nodded in complete agreement, and the cleverer ones at once began to learn the Commandments by heart.
A wise man once wrote, “Change is the only constant in life.” Or it might have been an animal who wrote it. A pig, perhaps.
Regardless, by the end of Orwell’s book, the Seven Commandments had disappeared from the wall, replaced by one lone Commandment:
All Animals are Equal
But Some Animals are More Equal Than Others
In Animal Farm, the animals who, in the end, defined themselves as “more equal than others” were the pigs — the same animals who had instigated and led the revolution.
I’m thinking about this story, because I ran across an interesting article in Governing magazine, written by Clay S. Jenkinson and titled, “Is ‘All Men Are Created Equal’ a Declaration, Promise or Question?”
The subheader:
Thomas Jefferson’s meaning has been up for grabs since he penned the phrase in 1776. The country has proven to be all too comfortable with the ambiguity. Depending how we answer the question, it could help redeem the reputation of the third president or leave us with a lesser Jefferson.
As author Jenkinson notes in his essay, Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, as did many of the men who signed their names to the Declaration of Independence. Which might suggest that Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries, in spite of their fine words, subscribed to the same Commandment as Orwell’s pigs: “Some Animals are More Equal Than Others.”
We also note that the phrase “All men are created equal” was never meant to apply to women, who were, in Jefferson’s day, also treated as a form of property. Not that I’m complaining — I wish I could have had a bit more control over my ex-wife, Darlene — but ‘owning’ a woman has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur.
Considering how the leading politicians living in the American colonies in 1776 felt about ‘equality’, numerous men and women much smarter than myself have wondered how a phrase like, “all men are created equal” could have landed in the Declaration’s preamble… and what Jefferson and the other signers could possibly have meant by it?
Writer Jenkinson asks us to consider whether this is a declaration, a promise to future generations, or a question waiting to be answered.
Seems pretty clear to me. The document bears the title, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”. Therefore, “all men are created equal” is a declaration. If it were a question, Jefferson would have written, “Are all men created equal?”
And if it were a promise, it would say, “Someday all men will be treated equally.” Or something along those lines.
It also seems pretty clear to me — amateur researcher that I am — why this particular phrase was included. It was meant as a slap in the face to King George III, who thought he was better than everyone else. Thought he was “More Equal than Others”, so to speak.
In 1776, the political power in London rested mainly in the hands of the British Parliament, but the people of Great Britain still paid homage to The Throne… the Monarchy… the King or Queen, who inherited their position through some type of marital or biological relationship to this or that previous Monarch. That is to say, whatever power the King held was considered to come — not from The People — but from God Almighty. Parliament officially made the laws, but in the eyes of English subjects, the King was somebody special.
King George III, who sat on the British throne, or could be found in its general vicinity, had inherited his divine position from his grandfather, George II. (Not sure what happened to George-Two-and-a-Half.) Thomas Jefferson, and many others, placed the blame for the American Revolution squarely on King George’s shoulders, because the King had personally advocated, on more than one occasions, spankings for the misbehaving colonists, in the form of higher taxes. He even proclaimed, “We must either master them or totally leave them to themselves.”
That second option would have saved everybody a lot of trouble.
Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a long list of whining complaints leveled against King George. So we can hold this truth to be self-evident, that Jefferson wrote the phrase, “all men are created equal”, specifically to declare that George III possessed no divine right to political power or influence. Jefferson was saying, quite simply, “God created all of us (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males) with the same inalienable rights as any King — to make horrendous political mistakes, benefit from massive corruption, and suffer from unbelievable incompetence.”
The declarative phrase, “all men are created equal” was intended to refer to one person, and one person only: George III.
With a stroke of his pen, Jefferson declared that white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males were ‘equal’, even if their grandfather might have been a King.
But everyone else would have to wait their turn, if they wanted to be ‘equal’.
Some are still waiting.