In February of 2020, a friend hosted the third “Uncommon School” retreat on her and her husband’s land, Copper Beech Farm, dedicated to twin purposes: living off the land and discussing the philosophy of social contracts. When I joined the other farmers and scholars attending, we first learned the proper way to fell a tree. By night, we gathered to discuss the principles behind the U.S. Constitution, as one does.
There were chats on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, and readings of Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Through such texts, we strove to practice the very type of dialogue that democracy itself relies on, even as we puzzled over ways to make such dialogue a regular part of our lives.
It’s the prescience of the Uncommon School’s theme that strikes me now. Of course, the nation was already in crisis then, before George Floyd or Covid-19, as Trump 1.0 tested the waters with his authoritarian visions and stoked flames of polarization that today grow ever-higher. So it made a lot of sense to go back to first principles. How did we get in this mess? And how might we reboot society “with liberty and justice for all”?
It turns out that a lot of other people were confronting the same questions. If only we had known to invite author Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, who by then had already penned a work on civic engagement and the nation’s founding. Like our Uncommon School of political philosophy nerds, that work is only more relevant today. In fact, it feels like Allen’s Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality was written yesterday. Since the ascension of Trump 2.0, all National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding for research into issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion has been halted, the new priority being projects “that examine the founding of the nation and the significance of the Declaration of Independence.” Allen’s 2014 book does just that, but not in the anodyne, flag-waving manner that any enemies of equity might have imagined.
This book is a primer on holding the United States accountable to its original ideals by fostering a sense of ownership of our government among everyday citizens. Indeed, the volume could bear the same label that Woody Guthrie stuck on his guitar: “This machine kills fascists.”
The idea for the book emerged from another kind of uncommon school, night classes for working adults that Allen taught in Chicago, during which, she writes, “I realized for the first time in my life that the Declaration makes a coherent philosophical argument … about political equality.” And in drawing out the working students to engage with the historic text, she found a kernel of hope that people might claim the Declaration as (still) their own, and thus embrace the day-to-day work that democracy requires.
Allen’s deep dive into the history of the Declaration’s writing also shows just how to do that work, as she unpacks the precursors to the Declaration and the draft versions which representatives from the 13 colonies hammered out to their liking. Those drafts, those debates over wording that all could agree on, were, Allen argues, the best models we have for how democracy works. Democracy must involve the very “written by committee” process that makes most people roll their eyes. By embracing this, instead of the solitary genius/author that many misconstrue Thomas Jefferson to have been, “we can cultivate the collective intelligence that is better than what any individual can achieve.”
This is all too appropriate today, as we see the federal government abdicating its responsibility to the common good. It’s up to us, apparently, to reassert the vision of a widely inclusive nation, where diverse souls are all considered equal under the law. While that was never perfectly realized, now the federal government has further undermined the very notion of justice and equality. Also presciently, Allen addressed reviving them both in her 2023 book, Justice by Means of Democracy.
Clearly, she remains optimistic. That, too, stems from her reading of the Declaration of Independence, which, she says, “is built on the foundation of a sublime optimism about human potential.” Behind the founders’ embrace of equality was an audacious hope that we the people would claim our very government as our own.
Dr. Allen will speak about “250 Years of Our Declaration of Independence” on Thursday, September 18th, at 6 p.m, hosted by the Spence Wilson Center for Interdisciplinary Humanities at Rhodes College. This event is free and open to the public, but all attendees must pre-register using this link.