Over nearly two and a half centuries, liberal democracy in America has been tempered, stabilized, and elevated by the convictions about unalienable rights that gave birth to the nation and which are inscribed in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, but which do not belong to democracy’s original and core meaning.
As the United States confronts alarming levels of discord, division, and dysfunction, it is instructive to reconsider the nation’s founding principles, influential misconceptions propounded by intellectuals about the moral and political implications of those principles, and seminal lessons – ancient and modern – about freedom and democracy. A better understanding of the assumptions, ideas, and aims that spurred the transformation of thirteen British colonies into the world’s freest, most prosperous, and most diverse great power contributes to the restoration of that unity in diversity that remains, as it was at the founding, essential to advancing the public interest. Indeed, study of the Declaration forms a core component of liberal education, the distinctive form of civic education that is central to preserving and improving liberal democracy in America.
