Campbellsport Public Library

Our Declaration, a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality, Danielle Allen

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-299) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Our Declaration

bibliography

876140489

Danielle Allen

a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality

Allen makes the case that we cannot have freedom as individuals without equality among us as a people. Evoking the colonial world between 1774 and 1777, Allen describes the challenges faced by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston--the "Committee of Five" who had to write a document that reflected the aspirations of a restive population and forge an unprecedented social contract. Although the focus is usually on Jefferson, Allen restores credit not only to John Adams and Richard Henry Lee but also to clerk Timothy Matlack and printer Mary Katherine Goddard. Allen also restores the text of the Declaration itself. Its list of self-evident truths does not end with our individual right to the "pursuit of happiness" but with the collective right of the people to reform government so that it will "effect their Safety and Happiness." The sentence laying out the self-evident truths leads us from the individual to the community--from our individual rights to what we can achieve only together, as a community constituted by bonds of equality

Night teaching -- Patrimony -- Loving democracy -- Animating the Declaration -- The writer -- The politicos -- The Committee -- The editors -- The people -- On memos -- On moral sense -- On doing things with words -- On words and power -- When in the course of human events -- Just another word for river -- One people -- We are your equals -- An echo -- It becomes necessary -- The laws of nature -- And nature's god -- Kinds of necessity -- We hold these truths -- Sound bites -- Sticks and stones -- Self-interest? -- Self-evidence -- Magic tricks -- The creator -- Creation -- Beautiful optimism -- Prudence -- Dreary pessimism -- Life's turning points -- Tyranny -- Facts? -- Life histories -- Plagues -- Portrait of a tyrant -- The thirteenth way of looking at a tyrant -- The use and abuse of history -- Dashboards -- On potlucks -- If actions speak louder than words -- Responsiveness -- We must, therefore, acquiesce -- Friends, enemies, and blood relations -- On oath -- Real equality -- What's in a name?