Independence Hall, PhiladelphiaIt’s been a year since my last little piece on the Declaration of Independence, and what a year it’s been.
On the Right of our political spectrum, one could sum up its events and eventfulness in one word: Trump. A party has been captured by an outsider, the disaffection of millions of its rank-and-file revealed. At the national level, the Grand Old Party is not so grand or even particularly coherent, and some fear it might not last as a party. Something similar can be said of the party of the Left. Substitute “Clinton” and “Sanders” and comparable deep fissures emerge, although perhaps with less likelihood of disintegration.
What light, in terms of principles and manner of thinking about politics, might this context shed?
