When the Declaration of Independence was quoted at the top of Saletan's first article in this series I had a sense that the question raised was whether the principle of egalitarianism as one of the bases for our democratic system was being questioned. I tried to post to lay out some of the other arguments for egalitarianism (universal treatment before the law, or blind justice are other manifestations of this concept), but I don't post often and underestimated the amount of white noise in the Fray, especially surrounding this article apparently.

First of all, Natural Rights, which could be derived from "all men are created equal" can be justified on many grounds and through many interpretations. The most obvious might be that god created everyone as moral equals and thus every person is guaranteed certain inalienable rights, including equal treatment before the law (which would hold irrespective of IQ differences). In a Hobbsean sense, one could say that all men are created equal in the sense that each is equally capable of taking another's life and equally incapable of protecting his own on his own. This requires a government to guarantee certain fundamental rights or equal protection. In some sense, arguments for natural rights were already disprovable. Rousseau for example posited a state of nature where the first person was a solitary creature, which could be proved as historically, or anthropologically false, from which he built his philosophy.

However, the larger point is that egalitarianism must first be defined as equality in the face of the law/government, and can be defended on many different theoretical grounds. The argument could be made that egalitarianism is derived from the concept of blind justice that was established as the principle of universal application in common law inherited in this country and the founding documents are attempts to enshrine this principle instead of the place where it emanates from. Utilitarians have argued for egalitarianism as well as advocates of social justice.

More to the point, genetics isn't the first principle that has flown in the face of the concept of "all men are created equal". Very few people ever expected the nature versus nurture argument to end up completely as a victory for nurture (if circumstance defines possibility completely than all people are truly born equally capable), except for maybe B.F. Skinner. There are many examples of governmental/legal systems where the way the government treats you is based on who you are. Think Rome allowing the people it conquered to keep their own legal systems as separate from their own. Look to Latin America (or maybe even the United States now) where military personnel have a separate legal code that applies when officers are off duty and holds civilians accountable when they have a conflict with military personnel. The egalitarian system is one that we were lucky enough to inherit and one that doesn't exist still in much of the world. There are many strong justifications for why it is the best and fairest possible that don't rely on the literal truth that "all men are created equal". That being said, genetic differences in IQ is among a long list of arguments against it. One might say that legal egalitarianism is a separate principle from how the government should form policy (presumably targeting it with the most information it has), but I think it is extremely pertinent because all government policy should be egalitarian (universal, blind) because individual liberty means that the individual has a fundamental right to choose instead of having been chosen for.