Republican Creed of Equality

The Republican Party has a unique opportunity right now to reclaim its original mission: to be the guardians of the principles upon which the United States was founded.

The Republican Party has a unique opportunity right now to reclaim its original mission: to be the guardians of the principles upon which the United States was founded.

Those principles—rooted in natural rights and the moral and civic virtues required for republican self-government—are not relics from the past. They are enduring truths that should be revitalized. They are the antidotes for the progressive culture of nihilism that now surrounds us.

The Republican Party can reclaim its noble purpose by adopting a Creed of Equality.

Historic Foundations

Founded in 1854, the Republican Party emerged as the moral-political corrective to the Democratic Party, which was filled with corruption and had abandoned-with-laughter-and-ridicule the ideas of the American Founding in order to justify slavery.

(The same Democratic Party would later reject the principles of the American Founding—again—in order to justify the creation of an unconstitutional German-style bureaucratic state.)

The first Republican Platform was written in 1856. The second Republican Platform—upon which Abraham Lincoln was elected as the first Republican President—was written in 1860.

Both documents opened by quoting from the Declaration of Independence, emphasizing the central idea that “all men are created equal” in the sense that every individual human being—regardless of skin color, sex, or any other accidental attribute of birth—possesses by nature “certain unalienable rights” among which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Founders were not perfect, but the principles they espoused were. And they remain perfect, today. These ideas—equality, natural rights, and a self-governing constitutional republic—are not merely historical artifacts; together, they form the moral high ground of justice.

Modern Challenges

These principles have been the objects of relentless assaults. Progressive critics, seeking to replace constitutional government with a sprawling administrative state directed by Presidential “leadership,” have produced blistering critiques of the American Founding ideas for over a century.

Woodrow Wilson’s doctoral dissertation, to name only one prominent example, was a 330-page rejection of the principles of the American Founding.

Progressives know that their agendas—fueled by socialism, identity-based tribalism, and moral relativism—require Americans to renounce the self-evident moral-political truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

More recently, from the conservative side of the aisle, self-described “post-liberals” and Christian Nationalists, deride the Founding principles as moral mistakes and philosophical errors.

They advocate a return to some kind of medieval Christian or Catholic theocracy, rejecting the religious liberty and freedom of conscience that were central to the American Founding—that remain central to what it means to be a good American today.

These are the kinds of conservatives who don’t celebrate George Washington’s beautiful letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport; they’re embarrassed by it. They wish he never wrote it.

Creed of Equality

Amid these challenges, the Republican Party should right now adopt a Creed of Equality:

1. Equality of Natural Rights

• Every individual, always and everywhere—regardless of skin color, sex, or birth—has an inherent rightful claim to his or her own person, property, and freedom.

• These rights exist independently of government and serve as the ultimate standard for judging laws; universal natural rights are why theft, murder, rape, tyranny, and slavery are wrong.

2. Equal Protection of the Laws

• Laws must provide equal protection for the equal natural rights of each and every United States citizen.

• Legalized government programs that confiscate money from some to benefit others should be abolished; so too, legal categories based on race, sex, or sexuality that grant special protections for some citizens while imposing special burdens on others should not be tolerated.

3. Equality of Civil Rights

• Civil rights—which include the legal right to vote, to a trial by jury when accused of violating criminal laws, to sue in civil courts for noncriminal civil disputes, to run for and be elected to office—must apply equally to all adult citizens. (Much of what is called “civil rights” today aren’t civil rights at all, such as forcing cake bakers to bake cakes they don’t want to bake.)

• Restrictions of civil rights/civil liberties should arise only from criminal convictions and apply uniformly to all citizens.

Why It Matters

Republicans can and should have heroes, of course. But the party qua party should not merely be a cult of personality. The Republican Party should not simply be about Trump, or Reagan, or Coolidge, or Lincoln, or any other individual mortal person.

The Republican Party should be the party of ideas, the part of principles.

By making the Creed of Equality part of the Republican brand—by embracing the Creed of Equality in words, in actions, in policies, in private conversations, in public speeches, and in everything they do—Republicans can stand proudly on high moral ground, set America on a course of justice, freedom, self-government, equal protection of the laws, and the unprecedented human flourishing that results from free enterprise.

All those who disagree will remain on the low ground and defensive footing of injustice, inequality, illiberalism, government without consent from the governed, the identity politics of tribalism, and government corruption fueled by crony favoritism.

For Republicans who want to borrow this Creed and use it, I say: Please do.