Declaration of politics

During the recent July 4th holiday, amidst the barbecues, mattress sales, and fireworks, there was quite a bit of highfalutin rhetoric about our Founders and an almost sacred revisionism through which we view their efforts. In fact, they had a lot in common with contemporary politicians. In fact, polarization, partisanship and divisiveness were alive and well on July 4, 1776. All the usual players were their; angry populists, elites, grass roots democrats and the strange bedfellows that joined together to achieve an independence that not everyone wanted. William Hogeland, in his book Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1-July 4, 1776, tells the whole unvarnished story. My conversation with William Hogeland: var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}