It all depends on what "being equal" means.

There are so many ways in which people are unequal and few in which they are equal.

The lazy bum on the street who refuses to work is no equal to hard-working parents who sacrifice for their children and keep food on the table and clothes on their backs for them.

"Pursuit of happiness" needs clarification. I don't think people are wholly motivated by the prospects of happiness.

What makes us happy? For how long. Does happiness achieved lead to taking it for granted?

I submit that lasting inner peace is to be preferred to ephemeral happiness.

Right to life? Right to your own life, but not that of others who are having a perhaps greater or better life. For some, life is no bargain.

Right to rule ourselves? An illusion at best. We are mostly followers of rules that we don't make.

That said, I am a grateful American because I think we think we have it better than anywhere else, and even if that is an illusion, it works pragmatically ... at least for me.

"Invictus"

By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Mondo in 4 verses.