The truths on which the nation was founded—equality, sovereignty, and consent—had been retold after the Civil War. Modern liberalism came out of that political settlement, and the United States, abandoning isolationism, had carried that vision to the world: the rule of law, individual rights, democratic government, open borders, and free markets. The fight to make good on the promise of the nation’s founding truths held the country together for a century, during the long struggle for civil rights. And yet the nation came apart all the same, all over again.
