How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

Now, this argument can cut in favor of discrimination both in favor of and against various groups. In its earliest form, it cut in favor of disparate legal treatment against those considered unequal. Ardent advocates of slavery posited that innate human inequality provided a rationale for disparate treatment of human beings. John C. Calhoun, the firebrand senator, secretary of state, secretary of war, and two-time vice president, routinely disparaged the Declaration of Independence, infamously explaining on June 27, 1848, that its key proposition, that “all men are created equal,” was patently false and superfluous: “[This proposition] was inserted in our Declaration of Independence without any necessity. It made no part of our justification in separating from the parent country.” Calhoun described that key proposition at the heart of Americanism as a dangerous error. He stated that human beings were not free or independent, but restricted by government and socially defined. Slavery, therefore, was justified by the “debased” nature of some and the “virtue” of others. Liberty of individuals, Calhoun argued, “instead of being equal in all cases, must necessarily be very unequal among different peoples, according to their different conditions.”43