Every year Americans celebrate our patriotic unity, but historian Sean Wilentz writes that from the start this day was used by opponents to score political points—and that we shouldn’t forget our history is as much about conflict as comity.
Even at a time of bitter political partisanship and ideological division, celebrating the Fourth of July remains a surpassing national ritual of patriotic unity. The hot dogs and picnics and fireworks are the show; beneath them stirs a common veneration for the Declaration of Independence and especially its opening passages about the self-evident truths of equality and humankind’s inalienable rights. Americans spend the rest of the year either taking those words for granted or fighting intensely—and, these days, bitterly—over what the words mean in our own political time. But for one blessed solitary day, we give the arguments a rest in order to express gratitude, delight, and even wonder at what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues wrought in 1776. And many people lament a fancied bygone time when this basic unity pervaded American political life all year long, despite our many differences...
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