Death and misery are too great a price to pay to preserve the notion that this nation is based on shared values. It isn’t.

History might be written by the winners, but our most profound, long-lived legends and stories are created by the folk. That’s why the stories, songs and poems are not called Elite Lore. Many of them are cautionary tales about the blindness, cruelty, hubris and dehumanizing excesses of authority. The Framers, aware of this creative power, [...]