The Declaration's Civic Anthropology

It is the Fourth of July, so it is time for a Law and Liberty tradition: a “Declaration and Us” essay. Begun in 2014, these essays attempt to extract nuggets of political wisdom from the founding document of the United States and apply them to today’s political disputations. The two operations are premised on the belief that the Declaration contains perennial wisdom—wisdom that can not only guide but also judge us Americans today. A bold claim, it echoes the bold claim to revolutionary independence on the basis of permanent principles made in the document itself.