Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality

Allen’s basic argument is not simply that the Declaration makes claims about equality but rather that it embodies and creates the kind of equality it discusses. Thus, the power of language to shape reality is central to Our Declaration.

Allen first asserts the power of language in the Prologue, when she argues that “language is one of the most potent resources each of us has for achieving our own political empowerment” (21). What she means by this becomes clearer as she notes that the Founding Fathers “grasped” the transformational “power of words,” which they wielded to bring “the Declaration, and their revolution, into being” (21). She then lays out her argument that the Declaration conducts transformative work: As it opens the colonists are still British subjects, and by the end they are independent citizens of new states. In part, her point is that the colonists use language to assert their right to a reciprocal relationship with the king and to portray him as a tyrant, thereby seeking support for their cause. However, Allen also notes that language is a tool of the logic and reasoning that the Declaration relies on; in making its assertion that the right to happiness is a right to properly constituted government, for example, the Declaration hinges on the assumption that people can evaluate the text’s language and thus engage with it as equal participants in a political community.