Happy 250th!
(Printed textile bandana commemorating the Declaration of Independence ca. 1778) It is astonishing to realize the age of the United States is only three human lifetimes long. (I consider eighty-three years to be a reasonable or normal lifespan.) Many of us get caught up in the day-to-day angst of partisan politics without thinking too much about how it all began. Our modern two-party system in America was birthed out of debates between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton on the role of government and also the broader debate between Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke on the subject of the French Revolution, which came approximately thirteen years after the Declaration of Independence. (Many mistakenly believe the French Revolution preceded the American Revolution.) I always thought it was an interesting irony that the French Revolution denounced Christianity and turned churches across France, including Notre Dame, into Temples of Reason, even ceremoniously crowning women as "goddess...
