> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Equal, in other words, not in innate capacities - a patently foolish notion, to anyone who's known enough people to count on two hands - but rather in worth in the eyes of God, and thus, deriving from that ultimate source of morality, in the eyes of men as well - and further, that deriving from this radical equality, all men possess in the same degree those rights which enable the construction of a worthy and satisfactory life, each man by his own lights.

Yes, Jefferson was a slaveowner, and yes, for all the protestations of 'man' meaning the species, he did somewhat forget about women. The Declaration is in every sense aspirational, and we need not discard its astonishing and rather lovely idealism because its author had feet of clay.

Nor need we discard it because of genetic determination of intelligence, to whatever extent that occurs. To do so requires that we take as axiomatic, or self-evident, that intelligence is the only meaningful measure of human worth. I don't think that accurately describes the world in which we live. I don't think that such a world is one that any of us wants to see built, and if we find ourselves having done so nonetheless, I confide that history will judge us most harshly for it - and deservedly so, as I can imagine few regimes more chilly to optimism and hope, more destructive of ambition and achievement, than that in which a particular combination of abstract reasoning and symbol-manipulation skills holds perfect hegemony over the conception of human value, and all else is treated as fungible and ultimately meaningless.