M.E. Bradford and the Founding

[Chris]

M.E. Bradford and the Founding is a look at the argument between M.E. Bradford and Harry Jaffa over whether the Declaration was revolutionary and the meaning of "all men are created equal."

M.E. (“Mel”) Bradford’s interest in the Founding follows naturally from his Agrarianism. He believed that, unlike the French and Russian Revolutions, America’s was a conservative revolution....

...He believed (like Gary Wills has also stated) that this “anachronistic gloss” upon the Declaration could be traced to Abraham Lincoln, who, at Gettysburg, read the Declaration’s inalienable rights into the Constitution by refounding the nation on the proposition that all men are created equal....

His attempt to restore a conservative understanding of the Founding led to a series of famous exchanges with Harry Jaffa (and his epigones), and this is, probably, what Bradford is unfortunately best known for today. Jaffa argued that the Declaration was a revolutionary document. That it founded America on the principle of equality. That “equality…is then both good in itself and good for its consequences.” And that “the rooting of constitutionalism, and the rule of law in a doctrine of universal human rights, in the political act of a people declaring independence, is unique and unprecedented.”...

Bradford responded to Jaffa that equality was not a conservative principle. “Contrary to most Liberals, new and old, it is nothing less than sophistry to distinguish between equality of opportunity…and equality of condition….For only those who are equal can take equal advantage of a given circumstance. And there is no man equal to any other, except perhaps in the special, and politically untranslatable, understanding of the Deity.” The only way such equality can be achieved is for it to be enforced by a totalitarian central government. And people will demand that it is enforced because “envy is the basis of its broad appeal….Furthermore, hue and cry over equality of opportunity and equal rights leads, a fortiori, to a final demand for equality of condition.”...

More at the link.

[RMNIXON]

I have always taken it to mean Equality Under the Law weather rich or poor and no matter ones race or gender. That fundamental Rights are universal to all (thus Slavery was a clear violation for example).

Bradford was predicting the abuse of "liberal" interpretations of course, the kind we see today when Social Justice advocates use the word "Equity" and "Equality" improperly. Meaning Equal Outcomes and implying absence of same is an injustice of some sort or another.

[Chris]

If we were to divide equality up we could say

• equal before the law -- Bradford
• equal opportunity -- Jaffa (which is still conservative but on a slippery slope to...)
• equal outcomes -- Biden's equity