[vtange]

That line is taken out of context a lot - the Declaration of Independence does not try to assert that all humans are equal in ability, its main focus was to state that all humans have equal rights to their life, liberty and freedom to pursue happiness. That means that even if a human is weaker, or even disabled, he or she still has equal rights to a human who is in good health.

[tynpeddler]

Yes and no. Classical liberalism uses the assumed equality of all people to argue that the people are capable of and ought to engage in self rule. If by some miracle of science we can prove that this presumed equality is mostly false, then you can begin to attack the fundamental justification for self rule. There is a lot of complexity here (for example, what does it even mean for for a disabled person to have an equal right to good health?) and this discussion could go for days, but assumed equality is a huge foundational point for classical liberalism.

[pdonis]

> Classical liberalism uses the assumed equality of all people to argue that the people are capable of and ought to engage in self rule.

"Equality" in the sense of equal rights, yes. Not in the sense of equal capabilities. Classical liberalism, as exemplified in documents like the Declaration of Independence, was based on the idea that, even though people have differences in ability, those differences do not give any person a right to rule over any other person. That's where the justification for "self rule" comes from.

Since this reasoning already recognizes that people have differences in ability, "science" showing that people have differences in ability (did we really need "science" to tell us this? isn't it obvious?) does not invalidate the reasoning at all.

[fjsolwmv]

But not if they were "nonhuman savages" that were roughly human shaped but not Western European in skin tone.

[avertz]

There are other interpretations that square with this obvious contradiction. The founders may have believed as Aristolte that man was a rational animal and those lacking rationality were not men but just animals and fit to be slaves. More likely though they did not mean the equality of White and black but the equality of themselves and King George, stripping him of his divine right to rule. Using this quote to justify contemporary egalitarianism is ridiculous.

[crimsonalucard]

Also, originally it only referred to men as in human of the male sex.