In its flagship publication, Imprimis, Hillsdale College has reprinted a speech that best-selling author Dinesh D'Souza delivered at their National Leadership Seminar in Colorado Springs. Mr. D'Souza has thought deeply and written eloquently about the Christian roots of our culture and their importance in securing our rights, freedoms and human dignity. As the battles between Christians and secularists heighten during the Christmas season, this speech is an important reminder that the struggle is about much more than nativity scenes at the courthouse and Christmas carols at the school assembly; at stake are the most fundamental values of Western civilization.IN RECENT YEARS there has arisen a new atheism that represents a direct attack on Western Christianity. Books such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, and Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, all contend that Western society would be better off if we could eradicate from it the last vestiges of Christianity. But Christianity is largely responsible for many of the principles and institutions that even secular people cherish—chief among them equality and liberty.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” he called the proposition “self-evident.” But he did not mean that it is immediately evident. It requires a certain kind of learning. And indeed most cultures throughout history, and even today, reject the proposition. At first glance, there is admittedly something absurd about the claim of human equality, when all around us we see dramatic evidence of inequality. People are unequal in height, in weight, in strength, in stamina, in intelligence, in perseverance, in truthfulness, and in about every other quality. But of course Jefferson knew this. He was asserting human equality of a special kind. Human beings, he was saying, are moral equals, each of whom possesses certain equal rights. They differ in many respects, but each of their lives has a moral worth no greater and no less than that of any other. According to this doctrine, the rights of a Philadelphia street sweeper are the same as those of Jefferson himself.
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