Elsewhere in the world — Spain in the 17th century; China today — the argument against liberty has mainly been an argument for tradition, hierarchy and order. In America, the argument against liberty has been the argument of hypocrites. To deny freedom to others inevitably means subverting the principle through which one can claim freedom for oneself.

That’s why every significant liberation movement in the U.S., from abolition to suffrage to civil rights to marriage equality, has made its case by appealing to foundational principles, not rejecting them.

“The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham,” Frederick Douglass reproached a Rochester audience on July 5, 1852. But he also said, in the same speech, that “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document.” Martin Luther King Jr., made essentially the same case 111 years later from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

This has always been one of the astonishments of America: The origin story of the ruling class does more to undermine than bolster its claims to power. Take that origin story away — the one that traces a line from Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence to the Battle of Gettysburg to the Freedom Riders — and you lose this.

Past generations of oppressed Americans have bested their oppressors by appealing to their conscience and self-interest. But if a new origin story were to tell us that our ideals have always been a sham (as opposed to being honored too much in the breach), and that the whole story of America is one of unremitting oppression (as opposed to the far-too-gradual relief of oppression), then we would lose the mechanism of self-reproach by which past progress was made.

At that point, the only thing for people with power to do would be to hold on to it. Why should anyone bother to measure his behavior according to standards nobody expects him to hold?

This is a beautiful country, especially amid red rocks under vast skies. But as people like Hamilton Warren knew, the real beauty of America has less to do with the outer vistas than the inner ones — the ever-renewing possibility of being “more perfect” according to ideals that remain our starting point and destination.

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