{"id":3193,"date":"2026-07-03T19:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3193"},"modified":"2026-07-03T19:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:08:12","slug":"even-thomas-jefferson-needed-an-editor-america-still-thrives-when-different-ideas-collide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3193","title":{"rendered":"Even Thomas Jefferson needed an editor. America still thrives when different ideas collide"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>As Thomas Jefferson \u201cfairly writhed\u201d in his seat, according to historian Jon Meacham, 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress group-edited the Declaration of Independence. Imagine the ordinary agony of a man who led one of the most extraordinary lives in history, forced to listen to \u201cmember after member offering his thoughts, wanting to change this and cut that.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3191\">Opinion: America celebrates liberty. But can it still practice mercy?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Having devoted my life to gathering people who don\u2019t think alike into rooms of deep listening across enormous divides, I feel his pain. But I also recognize the genius reflected in that same moment: America was designed to be edited.<\/p>\n<div>\n<h5>More guest opinion pieces relating to America 250<\/h5>\n<div><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Opinion: Limited government and the pursuit of happiness<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Opinion: The founders bet their future on the American experiment<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Opinion: Defining the heart of a nation \u2014 patriotism vs. nationalism<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Opinion: The civic virtue of everyday citizens<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li><u>Opinion: The Declaration of Independence is more than America\u2019s birth certificate<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The result of their labor became a Declaration that made its way to a king, to a people \u2014 and in the 250 years since \u2014 into human hearts in even the darkest corners of the globe. So began the complicated business of navigating self-government \u2014 now in an America of almost 350 million opinionated citizens who are free to express those opinions (and rarely hesitate to do so).<\/p>\n<p>As we mark the anniversary of the Declaration that brought our country into being, I have been struggling with where we are as a people. As inheritors of a transcendent idea planted firmly in a clear-eyed understanding of human nature, lately we seem to have all but surrendered to the coarser aspects of being human. <\/p>\n<p>On this July 4, to our deep peril as a people, I fear we\u2019ve forgotten the fundamental genius of our own idea. If we Americans are to continue our legacy of leading lives free of the whims of a king, we must by definition do it as a joint project with people we fundamentally disagree with \u2014 however wrong they often are \u2014 who <i>also<\/i> want to live free. <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been lucky this year to explore the past and present of the American idea in the company of the giant thinkers of our time through the Village Square and Florida Humanities UNUM series. Our most recent conversation was with constitutional scholar Yuval Levin, who opens his book \u201cAmerican Covenant\u201d with James Madison in Federalist 10: \u201cAs long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To build on Madison and Levin, if there\u2019s one thing I\u2019ve learned from being in many rooms with citizens I disagree with, it\u2019s that people can be shockingly incorrect, impressively self-deluding and breathtakingly hypocritical. I doubt I would have stayed in many of those rooms were this not my job. <\/p>\n<p>But having done so, I know now that it\u2019s not only my political foes who are deeply flawed and often wrong \u2014 it\u2019s friends too. And I too am often wrong. By sticking it out with other often-wrong people of every political, racial and religious stripe, I have learned that it is in proximity to exactly this wide variety of sometimes-right people that the most profound insights of my civic life have occurred. <\/p>\n<p>Others can see what I often cannot, and I become a better person in their company. If you don\u2019t know this about yourself yet, you haven\u2019t been in enough of the rooms a free people must occupy to stay free.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3189\">BYU gets 2nd commit in as many days, this time from a 3-star OT<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Levin, whose politics are different from my own, reminded us that both sides of disagreements are populated by just such fallible people \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s human beings all the way down\u201d \u2014 and that \u201cgetting in each other\u2019s way in our system is a feature, not a bug.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You see, our project doesn\u2019t work without people who challenge our reasoning. A diverse citizenry forged through ongoing disagreement sees more things clearly and achieves more results than does a king sitting around cogitating. <\/p>\n<p>I believe we are living at a hinge point in history when there is no shortcut but to dig deep into our personal and civic reserves and <i>refuse <\/i>to be alienated from those we disagree with<i> \u2014 <\/i>unless we\u2019re willing to risk becoming the generation of Americans who lose the gift of freedom our framers gave the world.<\/p>\n<p>The sentences in the Declaration that began \u201cwe hold these truths to be self-evident\u201d are words that powerfully told a king that in this new country, the people would be sovereign. It turns out \u201cself-evident\u201d wasn\u2019t even Jefferson\u2019s original word choice, but a suggestion by Ben Franklin.<\/p>\n<p>Jefferson wasn\u2019t just flawed enough to benefit from an editor \u2014 his imperfection was epic. For a lifetime Jefferson\u2019s personal actions betrayed his soaring words \u2014 failing to free more than 600 human beings he kept as slaves.<\/p>\n<p>This moral contradiction screams loudly through the two and a half centuries \u2014 if only we can hear it \u2014 that even a person capable of bravely founding the nation that Lincoln would later call \u201cthe last best hope of earth\u201d can also be capable of callous cruelty.<\/p>\n<p>Our system of government is designed for the imperfect people they were \u2014 and we are. Some days it\u2019s hard to do, but it is by staying in the messy thrum of disagreement with each other that we continue to live incrementally into the better people and the better nation we can become. It\u2019s when we stop being in proximity to each other \u2014 a self-imposed, intellectual isolation too many of us are now choosing \u2014 that the gravest dangers become possible.<\/p>\n<p>Over the next 250 years, may we have the humility to listen to the \u201ceditors\u201d our fellow citizens are meant to be for us and possess the same steady determination of the generations we follow \u2014 in pursuit of this great unfinished project we share. <\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanmovershub.com\/?p=3187\">Letter to the Editor: Recognizing the national anthem during America 250<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Happy birthday, America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The idea that any of us alone see things clearly \u2014 and that anyone who disagrees is an adversary \u2014 is uniquely un-American <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Even Thomas Jefferson needed an editor. 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