Rescuing the Declaration From Left- and Right-Wing Polemics

Progressive left and postliberal right intellectuals converge in teaching scorn for America’s founding principles. Attacking from different angles, both camps employ grossly flawed arguments to justify the repudiation of the U.S. Declaration of Independence’s ringing affirmation 249 years ago of the unalienable rights that human beings share. Captive to the taste for the gaudy and the melodramatic nurtured by American higher education, both camps want to revalue traditional values, change the world rather than understand it, and replace history’s complexities with simplistic grand narratives…