“I hear America singing,” Walt Whitman declares — each American “singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.” The new issue of National Review celebrates the 250th birthday of our nation. Have we lived up to the Founders’ vision?

Or, to adapt the catchphrase of the late Ed Koch, How’re we doin’?

Our special section on America at 250 kicks off with Gordon S. Wood: “In the Declaration of Independence, . . . the Founders put down five significant words that came to define America’s culture — ‘all men are created equal.’ No phrase could have been more radical, more momentous.”

Robert P. George, observing that our “bonds are weakening,” calls for a revival of Burke’s “little platoons,” the “building blocks of virtue, from families to voluntary associations, that work together to form an informed and virtuous citizenry.”

Yuval........

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