{"id":1056,"date":"2026-07-03T16:14:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2026-07-03T16:14:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T16:14:21","slug":"the-strange-history-of-the-word-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1056","title":{"rendered":"The Strange History of the Word Equal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cHeaven created all persons in the same rut.\u201d<\/span> This is how one early Japanese translation of the Declaration of Independence rendered the self-evident truth mentioned in its most celebrated sentence. To many Americans, this may sound like an eccentric misunderstanding of \u201call men are created equal.\u201d After all, the egalitarian arithmetic of the Declaration\u2019s claim seems clear enough: Every person carries the same weight. How else could colonists claim equality with the King and hold him to account?<\/p>\n

Read more The \u2018Have It Both Ways\u2019 Theory of Great Books<\/a><\/p>\n

But this Japanese translator realized something important: When Thomas Jefferson set pen to paper in the summer of 1776, the meaning of the adjective equal<\/i> was less self-evident than its mathematical associations suggest. Samuel Johnson\u2019s 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language <\/i>had listed no fewer than eight definitions, including \u201clike another in bulk, excellence, or any other quality that admits comparison,\u201d \u201cin just proportion,\u201d and \u201cupon the same terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Applied to political matters, many of Johnson\u2019s definitions directly contradicted one another\u2014in ways that still matter today. \u201cIn just proportion\u201d summarizes what modern liberals and progressives have in mind when they argue for policies such as affirmative action. Respecting people as equals, they believe, sometimes means taking racial differences into account. Meanwhile, many conservatives gravitate toward \u201cupon the same terms.\u201d In their view, being equalmeans that people are the same in all ways that matter legally; policies built on group differences as treating people unequallybefore the law.<\/p>\n

Many contemporary controversies boil down to a simple disagreement over which particular definition of equal <\/i>applies. And there is much to debate, given how many social inequalities Jefferson and his co-authors left behind.<\/p>\n

The Founders were hardly the first<\/span> or the last egalitarians to conclude that some members of society were, as George Orwell put it, \u201cmore equal than others.\u201d The Declaration\u2019s reference to creation points us all the way back to the Book of Genesis, in which God creates men and women \u201cin his own image.\u201d But this divine similarity evidently did nothing to preclude slavery, patriarchy, and the many other social hierarchies depicted elsewhere in the Bible. Likewise, human equality was nowhere to be found in democratic Athens, where only native-born Athenian men were recognized politically as one another\u2019s peers.<\/p>\n

In the early third century, a Roman imperial jurist named Ulpian declared that \u201cas far as concerns the natural law, all humans are equal.\u201d But he didn\u2019t mean that all humans (male or female, slave or free) should be afforded equal rights. His point was that, much like the sun or rain or death, the laws of nature fell indifferentlyon everyone, regardless of their wealth or status.<\/p>\n

For the next millennium and a half, claims about equality proved remarkably consistent with sexism and slavery, as well as monarchy and universal empire. For most of our forebears, the claim that all humans were \u201cupon the same terms\u201d in the eyes of God simply did not mean that they were also sufficiently alike in excellence to be treated as social or political equals. Indeed, as in modern meritocracy, a major purposeof emphasizing human beings\u2019 intrinsic equality was to make excuses for their unequal fates. If some people suffered or lost out, they must have done something to deserve it.<\/p>\n

Only in 17th-century England<\/span> did equality become a basis for political demands by ordinary people. One day in the summer of 1646, a celebrity activist named John Lilburne appeared before the House of Lords and failed to kneel or even remove his hat. Summarily imprisoned by the nobles for contempt, Lilburne wrote a pamphlet asserting a \u201cgeneral Proposition\u201d: \u201cThat every particular and individual man and woman that ever breathed\u201d was \u201cby nature, all equal and alike in power, dignity, authority, and majesty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popularly known as \u201cFreeborn John,\u201d Lilburne had a talent for getting himself thrown in prison on behalf of various causes. Today, we might call him an \u201coutrage entrepreneur.\u201d But after his imprisonment, Lilburne\u2019s Proposition became the defining cause of the radical Leveller movement, which subsequently dedicated itself to unlocking all of the revolutionary possibilities lurking in the word equal<\/i>.The Levellers demanded universal male suffrage almost 300 years before modern Britain enacted it. And in an extraordinary 1649 appeal to Parliament, a group of Leveller women insisted that because they, too, were created \u201cequal <\/i>unto men,\u201d they must also have the right to petition their representatives.<\/p>\n

Read more It Wasn\u2019t Just the Founders<\/a><\/p>\n

The Leveller movement mostly failed. But Lilburne\u2019s Proposition lived on as a kind of early meme\u2014one that eventually made its way into the Declaration of Independence. As it happens, Lilburne was also distantly related to Thomas Jefferson, a cousin several generations removed. Whether the Virginian was aware of this personal connection is unclear.<\/p>\n

But in a letter written in June 1826, Jefferson summarized his view of equality in language borrowed from another Leveller, Richard Rumbold: \u201cThe mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them.\u201d (Jefferson died two weeks later, on the same day as his great friend and political rival John Adams: July 4, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.)<\/p>\n

Still, the meaning of equality was muddled enough in Jefferson\u2019s mind that he could, by the end of his life, claim ownership over hundreds of men and women born into slavery at Monticello\u2014at least two of whom, we now know, were named \u201cLilburn.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does this uncomfortable coincidence<\/span> in Jefferson\u2019s life tell us about the declaration that he drafted? Some readers might agree with The New York Times Magazine<\/i>\u2019s \u201c1619 Project,\u201d which argues that \u201cour democracy\u2019s founding ideals were false when they were written.\u201d As an approach to social justice, some commentators have even come to reject the term equality<\/i> and sought to introduce the term equity <\/i>in its place.<\/p>\n

The supposed difference comes through in a popular 2010s meme, showing two cartoons of people trying to watch a baseball game over a fence. In a panel labeled equality<\/i>, each person stands on a box of the same size, and not everyone can see the game. In a panel labeled equity<\/i>, the shorter people get extra boxes in inverse proportion to their height. But far from proving that equality is an outdated concept, the meme is merely showing us that two of Samuel Johnson\u2019s competing definitions of it remain in force.<\/p>\n

If nothing else, I hope that the strange, contentious history of equal<\/i> might help us reframe our political disagreements in a more transparent and constructive way. Because the conflict usually isn\u2019t between those who favor equality and those who oppose it. Rather, it\u2019s between people with conflicting views of what it means to be equal in the first place.<\/p>\n

Many different meanings of equal <\/i>were certainly in play when the Declaration was written, and they help explain why its \u201cself-evident\u201d truth has endured for 250 years. All of them also have a role to play as we pursue equality in the present day. Perhaps, as that early Japanese translator suggested, all Americans are indeed created in the same rut. But what happens next is up to us.<\/p>\n

Read more Photos of the Week: World Cup, Wine Battle, White Kimono<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The expansiveness of the concept helps explain its endurance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideas"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Strange History of the Word Equal - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1056\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Strange History of the Word Equal - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The expansiveness of the concept helps explain its endurance.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1056\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-03T16:14:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"The Strange History of the Word Equal\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-03T16:14:21+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056\"},\"wordCount\":1226,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/dd7eee2b9d88b818004496cfe6f46119.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Ideas\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=1056\",\"name\":\"The Strange History of the Word Equal - 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