Thought provoking essays. Her espousal Michael Novak's "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism" is deserved. Another example, and a quibble:
Some quarter of Jefferson's draft of the Declaration was cut by the Congress, after minor (it is thought) revisions by the Committee of Five. Jefferson, by all accounts, was devastated by the cuts. Noonan suggests, as the unkindest cut, the long penultimate passage holding the British people responsible for the separation, including as evidence the results of the 1774 Parliamentary election, which largely returned the same intransient Members to their seats. It concludes with the famous "We might have been a free and great people together."
I wonder if the author, or at least the inspiration, of that section might have been Franklin. The rest of the Declaration indicts King and Parliament, necessary to justify our resort to arms. No need to antagonize the British people, even if deserved. It sounds bitter, and personal. Franklin was a bit late to come to rebellion; much of his diplomatic career had been in striving to hold the Empire together, to forge a compromise; to become great together. But when Franklin rebelled, he did it with more heart and soul than any of the other major founders. John Adams, no stranger to hate, was startled by Franklin's vehemence. Paine's Common Sense, published anonymously, was suspected to be from Franklin's pen. Franklin was the only founder to have savaged personally, before the Privy Council in the Cockpit; he seems to have taken it as personally as Dan Morgan did his 500 lashes. Refer to Franklin's letters to his many British friends, accusing THEIR navy of burning our ports, and so on. Consider his cutting off his loyalist son, permanently.
Franklin was of the Committee of Five; he was largely absent from the Congress (an attack of the gout) in the several weeks leading up to the submission of the draft, so the assumption is that he was not present to contribute. But, he lived mere blocks away, and could well have been visited; and Jefferson sent him the "Friday morn" note, likely on June 22, asking for assistance, ASAP, on a draft of something - we know not what.