The United States is an extraordinarily free country. We have vindicated our freedom in the Civil War, in the world wars, and in the Cold War. We have demonstrated liberty's astounding strength as well as its compelling attractions. Unfortunately, our success makes it easy to forget that continued liberty depends on making intelligent choices here and now. Freedom can be frittered away in a generation as surely as it can disappear in a cataclysm.
The wisdom of today's choices depends on how well we understand our country's original principles, purposes, and institutions. Neither arrogant contempt for aged doctrines nor abject humility before superior founders but, rather, thoughtful attention to our remarkable patrimony is our surest contemporary political guide. We celebrate our independence best by attending to the Declaration that justifies it, and to the Constitution that forms our common life.
When we consider today's government from the perspective of our founding, we see a politics that threatens to become too thoughtless about basic purposes and too contentious in its everyday activity. Are we not conducting matters of ordinary politics--forming budgets or running for office--with excessive acrimony? Are we not treating fundamental questions of civil rights, federalism, and the effect of government on moral character with little serious attention to our founding principles? The proper balance between our practices and our goals appears to be at risk.
Today's contention and thoughtlessness
Several factors explain this contention and thoughtlessness. One is a change in our major political parties. The Constitution does not mention parties, which at first seem to
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