Self Evident?

They are self-evident, ultimately, because we believe that they are. Or because we believe in a God — whether biblical or not, literal or metaphorical or perhaps, like Jefferson’s or Einstein’s God, one and the same with the laws of nature — who decrees that they are. And, ultimately, this is a distinction without a difference. Either way, what lies at the foundation of the American experiment, our democracy, our very way of life, is an article of faith.

It is by no means the only possible political faith. For most of human history, no one believed in these propositions. Indeed, no one had even conceived of them. We forget how revolutionary these principles were at the time of the American founding, and even for centuries afterward. Until the late 20th century, liberal democracy was an exceedingly rare (and usually short-lived) phenomenon. For millennia, it appeared “self-evident” to most of humanity that the legitimacy of governments flowed from the divine right of kings, or the inherent superiority of a feudal aristocracy, or the enlightened wisdom of a theocratic priesthood. In the last century, totalitarian ideologies of left and right built regimes whose claims to legitimacy rested on the complete sublimation of individual worth to the deified class or race collective. And still today, authoritarians around the world bolster their support by championing the power of national and ethnic groups above the rights of the citizen.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lessons-my-father-charles-krauthammer-taught-me-about-being-thankful/2018/11/21/c314bf34-ecee-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.24d03038e2cf