This is by Noah Millman, written two years ago on the occasion of the 4th of July:
“The Constitution is just a piece of paper, the result of a series of arguments and compromises between mortal men, motivated both by public spirit and more venal emotions and interests. If we venerate it, we do so primarily because that veneration serves the conservative political purpose of unifying the population across both space and time, much as does British veneration of the crown, and not because those men in Philadelphia were inspired with other-than-worldly wisdom. So, too, with the Declaration, which was also a political document with a specific rhetorical goal. There is wisdom there, and beauty, and much worth loving for its own qualities and not merely for this aforesaid conservative purpose; but that wisdom is a human wisdom, that beauty a human beauty, and we are also human beings, capable of being wise as well as foolish, beautiful as well as ugly. And when we read these documents, and interpret them, and thereby keep faith with both our ancestors and our descendants yet unborn, it behooves us to read them and interpret them with our best wisdom, our best stab at beauty, because that is the only wisdom and the only beauty at our disposal.”
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/millman/the-declaration-and-secession/
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