Exactly 250 years ago this very month, a small group of men made the most radical, earth-shattering and beautiful assertion in the history of our species. They claimed that “all men are created equal.” Then they doubled down: These equally created men, they wrote, “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among them “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And most audaciously of all, they claimed this without proof or argument. Brushing all need to justify aside, they boldly declared “these truths to be self-evident.”