Common sense seems to have come into great disrepute these days.
Academics of the liberal so-called intelligentsia might be inclined to dismiss it as yet another example of a ‘deplorable’ deficit of nuanced thought.
Nonetheless, as a Philadelphian I recall that Tom Paine’s famous pamphlet of 1776 helped to sustain the American revolution and to ring the bells of idealism for the occasion. Paine wrote:
“ … we have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”
I am fond of saying that the real world is an idealist’s nightmare, and so, despite its unique political foundation, the trajectory of the United States has shown a destructive declension from the ideals embodied by its beautiful founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — documents whose principles contain within themselves the means to transcend the societal and cultural contexts and prejudices in which they were forged.