A woman who is a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Liz Harrington, claimed in a Fox News interview that Biden is trying to “rewrite history” and “tear it all down”–an obvious allusion to the removal of monuments to Civil War soldiers and others with questionable actions.

The RNC comes out hard against [checks notes] all people being created equal. pic.twitter.com/EhxYZHLd4u

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) July 6, 2020

Harrington refers specifically to Biden’s Fourth of July commemoration, in which he recognizes that the holiday “is a celebration of our persistent march toward greater justice — the natural expansion of our founding notion from ‘all men are created equal’ to ‘all people are created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives.'”

Ms. Harrington stated that Biden is trying to “literally rewrite the greatest foundational document in the history of mankind.”

“That’s the same radical left socialism that has taken over his party,” Ms. Harrington asserted.

Her first mistake:  literally not understanding what the word “literally” means.  No one is rewriting anything, let alone the Declaration of Independence.

But her next mistake is her failure to recognize that even the United States of America recognized the statement that “all men are created equal” was wrong when it was written.

Not “all men were created equal” when the document was written.  We had a founding document called the Constitution that considered some men, women and children to be 3/5ths of a person.

And the Biden campaign recognizes that under the founders’ words, roughly 51% of the US population–women–wouldn’t be considered equal.  In fact, if the founders’ words were still heeded, Ms. Harrington likely wouldn’t have been in the position to make such blunders on television; she’s be home making dinner “for her man.”

The US Constitution tried to rectify these problems, the former with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, and the latter rectified to some level with the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

Even with this updates, the ideal set forth in Declaration of Independence isn’t fulfilled.  The resurrected Equal Rights Amendment would correct some, but not all, of these issues regarding the rights of women.  And the LGBTQ community still faces significant hurdles.

In short, at the time the Declaration of Independence was written, its declaration that “all men are created equal” actually meant “all WHITE MALES are created equal” in spirit, if not in practice.

And while we’re still far away from ensuring all Americans are treated equally–as the Biden camp aspired to note in his July Fourth statement–we have come a long way in recognizing many of the shortcomings of this founding document.

Ms. Harrington’s statement exemplifies a bigger problem, though:  the desire to ignore the sins of the past.  Ms. Harrington’s attempt to label this recognition as “radical left socialism” not only miscommunicates what “socialism” is–besides being a trigger word of the GOP–it also fails to acknowledge that a tenet of traditional conservatism is that all people should be treated equally and fairly under the law and in our society.

Today’s conservatives and today’s GOP have abandoned that principle.  Communities of color experience fewer financial opportunities and investment in their neighborhoods.  LGBTQ people can still be discriminated against because of whom they love.  Women can be underpaid simply because of their gender.

Instead, the rich are privileged.  Whites, particularly white men, have expectations of how they should be allowed to do as they want, regardless of laws, without repercussions.  And christians must have the right to proselytize at the suppression of other religions. The aggrievement of white men comes from having to wear a mask to prevent the spread of a pandemic, or a refusal to say a “christian” prayer at the start of a town meeting, or having to see a same-sex couple hold hands in public or–gawd forbid–kiss in a television show.

So, as Ms. Harrington and the GOP try to pretend we’re in the Bad Old Days of women who couldn’t vote, enslaved Black people, and discrimination based on who you love, the nation will continue to move towards an ideal of “all people are created equal” without literally changing a founding document.