With the fulminating on the left about inequality–“Fighting inequality is the mission of our times,” as New York‘s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, summed up the theme of his post-election powwow with President Obama–it’s worth pausing to admire anew the very different, and very realistic, modesty underlying Thomas Jefferson‘s deathless declaration that all men are created equal. We are equal, he explained, in having the same God-given rights that no one can legitimately take away from us.

But Jefferson well knew that one of those rights—to pursue our own happiness in our own way—would yield wildly different outcomes for individuals. Even this most radical of the Founding Fathers knew that the equality of rights on which American independence rests would necessarily lead to inequality of condition. Indeed, he believed that something like an aristocracy would arise—springing from talent, he hoped, not from inherited wealth.