As America approaches its 250th anniversary (the Semiquincentennial), we return to the Declaration of Independence and its most debated phrase: “all men are created equal.” Why created equal? Why not merely born equal?

In this episode, Dan McCarthy argues that the Declaration’s logic depends on a Creator: rights are not inventions of the state or products of social consensus, but endowments grounded in God and that foundation produces a radically different view of liberty, property, justice, and political authority than modern secular “rights talk.”

We also revisit what “revolution” meant to the American founders. For them, it was less a radical rupture and more a restoration of legitimate authority back to the people. From Locke to Jefferson, from Calhoun to modern ideologies, this is a philosophical primer on the competing foundations of political order and why recovering the Founding requires recovering what “created” truly implies.

Modern Age is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Visit modernagedjournal.com for new essays and archival classics, and subscribe to the quarterly print journal founded in 1957.