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I have a similar beef with misunderstandings about "all men are created equal" -- the point wasn't that every man (and, yes, Howiedoody Zinn, that includes women) is equal (key word leftists miss is "created") but that a king, too, is created equal (key word "all"). It justified separation from the King by denying divine rule, something that the great John Milton had affirmed a hundred years earlier in his argument that kings serve only at the consent of the people.

This is an interpretation which I had never before considered. I can see the point philosophically, but I find it difficult to believe that the people of that time period would have embraced it. In their culture, the King was effectively put into power by God, and I think it would probably take a generation or two not living under the "divine right of kings" to began to see the King as an "equal" to an ordinary man. Even today people don't see a King as equal, because so many are infatuated with Royalty and look on it admiringly.

Still, I get that "All men are created equal" is a core statement of a free and democratic people, so its meaning far exceeds its logical purpose in the Declaration.

It came to mean such, but at the time they sent it to England, so far as they were concerned it only meant that *they* were equal. Like a selfish child, their primary concern was for themselves, even though they were hypocritically denying this equality for others.

I can see the point philosophically, but I find it difficult to believe that the people of that time period would have embraced it.

Let's just say that Jefferson wasn't dumb. He deliberately built the logic. He knew Milton, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume (and the rest of the canon, especially Machiavelli and Montesquieu), and he knew that the logic of independence required denial of divine rule.

George Washington, btw, understood that the people didn't understand that, which is why he went out of his way to act like a king, all the while reenacting Cincinnatus and not Caesar.

Even today people don't see a King as equal, because so many are infatuated with Royalty and look on it admiringly.

Certainly, and it was visceral back in the day, but more for the religious than civil implications. Killing Charles I was wrong not for its act of regicide but for the deicide, as Chuckie was head of the church. (Under a pope, kings were expendable, but if the king represented God, uh oh.)

Washington's greatness was in distinguishing himself from royalty while accommodating the ingrained mindset. Most remarkable. GIII understood what Washington was up to, as well, and it must have scared the crap out of him.

Finally, remember that the American Revolution was an upper class revolution. It wouldn't have happened otherwise.