A new book by Walter Isaacson considers one of the most famous sentences in American history.

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The American narrative is not simple, straightforward, and linear. Narratives seldom are.

They often begin with great promise. Or great danger. Sometimes both. They meander and, if the author or authors aren’t careful, the reader becomes lost or disillusioned. At inopportune times—perhaps when the characters are at their weakest—some outside force comes along to throw the whole tale off track. Events hidden at the time they occur can resurface much later and cast the entire enterprise into doubt. Too often the story line is so hard to follow, or becomes so unbelievable, that the reader gives up in frustration.

But when a narrative needs to be told, a core truth or ideal may resurface at key moments to remind us of the value, the necessity even, of this particular story.

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (2025) by Walter Isaacson examines the narrative of America through the lens of the second sentence in the Declaration of Independence. In 67 short pages, Isaacson begins by making it clear that while we think of Thomas Jefferson as the author of one of the world’s most famous documents, he really just wrote the first draft which was then edited and changed multiple times. The drafting committee, including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, made substantial alterations, including to the first phrase, which Jefferson penned as “We hold these truths to be sacred . . . .” It was Franklin who crossed out “sacred” and inserted “self-evident.” From there, Isaacson takes us through what the men (and they were all men) were thinking, and the cultural and intellectual influences that swirled around them when they drafted, reworked, and ultimately signed their names to the document that rings with these words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This is a book that can be read in one setting, yet one to be savored and referenced again and again. Isaacson is a gifted writer with a deep love for history and biography. He notes that the phrase “self-evident” has a very specific meaning in analytic philosophy, “more than just a fancy way to say ‘obvious.'” The concept was developed by Franklin’s close friend David Hume. By labeling as self-evident the truths in their sentence, “Franklin and the drafting committee implied that they were true by definition, ‘discoverable by the mere operation of thought,’ not contingent on observations.”

“But let’s be honest,” Isaacson writes. “Labeling their assertions of ‘these truths’ as ‘self-evident’ was not entirely correct. They were, in fact, quite controversial, even revolutionary.”

In a similar fashion Isaacson takes us through the background and decision-making around the use of the well known phrases “all men,” “created equal,” “endowed by their creator.”

These truths became the “creed that bound a diverse group of pilgrims and immigrants into one nation.” The Declaration of Independence, as written in 1776 and then reinforced “four score and seven years” later at Gettysburg by Abraham Lincoln, defined both our common ground and our aspirations.

And it is in the exploration of what constitutes that common ground and how we continue to hold on to it in perilous times where Isaacson makes his case. We must seek those truths once again if we are to survive as a democracy. We need to refocus on the idea of the commons, where people treat each other with equal dignity. Americans—at their best—have shown how to be fiercely independent individuals who are equally fiercely devoted to their community and its commons.

Both Jefferson and Franklin, writes Isaacson, studied Isaac Newton “whose mechanics explained how contending forces could be brought into equilibrium. Their goal on contentious issues was not to triumph but to find the right balance.”

“Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin like to say, but they do make great democracies.”

But in today’s world the commons is shrinking. Isaacson quotes the philosopher Michael Sandel’s concept of the “skyboxification” of America, whereby places and practices that used to be in commons are now roped off. We used to sit in the same stands, come in through the same entrances, and share a common experience. But now there are VIP entrances and skyboxes. Gated neighborhoods. Separate lines at airports. Different types of schools. And this fracturing of our community is also seen in technology. What once promised to connect us “found a better business model in dividing us.”

America’s core principle, that this is a land of opportunity for all, is under attack. In the end Isaacson asks the reader to return to Franklin’s question about the purpose of an economy. Sure it exists to create wealth and growth. But the deeper purpose, Isaacson and Franklin would argue, is to create a good society. “A good, stable society where individuals can be free and flourish and live together in harmony.”

Our narratives and myths are always changing, and are often fractured. How can we move forward? Isaacson urges us to “be more like Franklin. He not only helped craft the sentence that defines our common ground. He lived it.

Franklin organized police, fire, and street-sweeping corps; a public library, hospital, and school; pension funds for widowers; and mutual insurance cooperatives. He ran a newspaper and publishing house that followed no party line. He gave money to a wide range of causes. Franklin set up a revolving fund for young entrepreneurs. When he died he was the largest individual donor to the Congregation Mikveh Israel, the first synagogue in Philadelphia. 20,000 mourners watched his funeral procession, “which was led by all the clergymen of every faith, including the local rabbi, walking arm-in-arm.”

In a recent newsletter, the historian and activist Rebecca Solnit wrote about the way that the wealthy and elites have destroyed the commons in our time to enrich their own wallets.

“In the 1990s I watched San Francisco-based Craigslist undermine newspaper want ads—what we called the classified section—as it expanded. There’s an argument to be made that Craigslist was a more convenient service, but the want ads in newspapers subsidized journalism. The revenue from Craigslist just subsidized Craig Newmark, who became a billionaire. It’s ironic that what was once Columbia Graduate School of Journalism is now the Craig Newmark School of Journalism; it’s a bit like a fox endowing an orphanage for motherless eggs. (He could have at least given the money directly to news reporting.)”

Isaacson maintains that Franklin’s example is the ideal of living in support of common ground and the American Dream. When I think of billionaires today hoarding their money made off the backs of workers and taxpayers, destroying our newspapers and social media, openly suggesting that democracy no longer works, I believe we need to do all we can to rein them in and rebuild the commons. And the American Dream.

More to come . . .

DJB

John Trumbull’s famous painting of the committee sharing its draft of the Declaration of Independence with the Second Continental Congress in the Public Domain from Wikimedia.