The reaction from the President’s critics was predictable: this is not what America is about. But reading those complaints, something struck me as odd. Isn’t that sort of what America is about?

Is the story of America’s founding not the story of a group of scrappy revolutionaries—farmers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, ordinary people—defeating the world’s most powerful empire with homemade weapons and naked fists? Fight night might be a stretch, but why should we not find some inspiration in the revolutionaries’ unlikely victory, their unplannable strength?

However, even if you concede that point, Trump and his allies have still misunderstood something. America might owe its place in the world to its physical might, but that’s not what makes America exceptional. That’s not what makes this country revolutionary.

The French aristocrat and statesman Alexis de Tocqueville first made this observation nearly two centuries ago. Following a nine-month journey across the United States in 1831, he published two volumes of Democracy in America, intending to show his countrymen what they had to “hope...or fear” from this new system of government now alive in France.

That a Frenchman gifted us the most prescient explanation of American democracy is often mentioned as an ironic point or treated as some kind of accident, as if to suggest we are always our own best witnesses. But his impressions are all the more meaningful because of the simple fact that he had no native attachment to this country. The American experiment and its corresponding ideals—however unrealized—were not passed on to him from a generation of revolutionaries who saw their new government as an ingenious fact of life, but he encounters all of the intricacies of this new world with suspicion and curiosity, as if it has all just landed at his feet.

So what did he have to say about the American Revolution? According to Tocqueville, the American Revolution was not revolutionary at all:

That a people should fight hard to achieve its independence is a spectacle by no means uncommon; one finds it repeated in century after century.

Separated from its enemies by 1,300 leagues of ocean and aided by a powerful ally, the United States owed its victory far more to its situation than to the valor of its armies or the patriotism of its citizens.

Yet, while Tocqueville resists assigning the American Revolution any special significance on the stage of world history, he does dwell on one curious fact around the nation’s founding:

What is new in the history of societies, however, is the sight of a great nation, warned by its lawmakers that the wheels of government are grinding to a halt, calmly and fearlessly turning its gaze upon itself, sounding the depths of its ills, refraining from action for two whole years while patiently seeking a remedy, and when at last that remedy is found, submitting to it voluntarily without costing humanity a single tear or drop of blood.

When the war ended in 1783, the states preferred to govern themselves rather than enact a strong, centralized government. The country almost fell apart several times under this weak attachment, most famously after Shays’ Rebellion, an insurrection led by Revolutionary War veterans and farmers against the Massachusetts government for failing to resolve the debt crisis.

In February of 1787, realizing the Articles of Confederation could not solve the country’s ills, Congress called for delegates to meet in Philadelphia in May to respond to the “inefficiency of the federal government” by drafting a new Constitution.

As Tocqueville remarks, it’s a strange and overlooked fact that ratifying the Constitution happened so long after the war ended. When Britain’s Glorious Revolution ended in February of 1689, the English Bill of Rights was enacted by Parliament in December of that same year. Tocqueville found it almost inconceivable that an infant country, stirred by the passions of revolution and hardened by disagreement over its future, could survive that state of limbo.

And it almost didn’t. Between tense state ratifying conventions and fierce national debates over the expansion of slavery, representation in Congress, and the inclusion of a Bill of Rights, the Constitution nearly failed several times. But the framers were resolved not to let disagreement be their enemy.

Tocqueville tells us that what makes America exceptional has nothing to do with sheer force or power—any nation can muster those, and most do it better than democratic ones. What makes America exceptional is what he saw in those revolutionaries who lived for years in the rubble of that first government without letting it bury them.

What America modeled for the world was not valor but patience, the ability to be self-determined yet self-conscious, desperate yet unhurried, eager to get the new country right but undestroyed by the reality that it would not be perfect. Tocqueville’s point is not ideological at all but historical, as if to say that no nation had ever stopped to consider itself so daringly.

As we look ahead to the next 250 years, it’s that striving patience we can find inspiration in. If we accept what Tocqueville has to say, then we should take pride in the challenge to be unsentimental about the way we’ve always done things so long as we believe we can do better, especially when there are no easy or quick fixes. And that challenge applies firstly to our Constitution.

That the Constitution was intended as a perennial draft, a document to be constantly renewed and infused with new energy, is a point so commonplace it is no longer interesting. No popular government had ever lasted even a century (the Athenian democracy, so long the interest of scholarly attention, lasted only 80 years). It’s difficult to imagine that these men intended this document to govern a society centuries beyond their imagination.

Yet, even if they had been so ambitious, would it not be lazy thinking on our part to assume that they were anything other than men who lived within their time? What lover of democratic government would like to admit that they are willingly and stubbornly bound to a document written by men they will never meet, in a society with no living witnesses?

If the delegates had followed that logic themselves, if they had stuck to the Articles of Confederation out of duty, the union surely would have fallen apart. It’s rarely mentioned that what we’re working with now is not this country’s first constitution but its second. Why should we be any less bold now when we have the advantage of 250 years of hindsight?

Tocqueville saw that patient self-reflection as the ongoing challenge of democratic citizens. In the conclusion to Democracy in America, written from his family estate in Normandy years after his visit, Tocqueville tells his reader that although the democratic revolution will now spread unimpeded across the world, it’s still unclear whether this new form of government will result in greatness or misery. But that’s our choice to make, he writes. For even if there is much to fear, “in order to be virtuous and prosperous, democratic nations have only to want to be so.”

That’s a greater test than any spectacle on the South Lawn.

He’s often heard giving a refrain about “love thy neighbor,” Jesus’s teaching that Talarico sees as the core tenet of his progressive brand of politics. The pastor’s deft handling of scripture to defeat Republican policy reminds me of the famous speech given by President Bartlett in The West Wing. Sparring with an overzealous radio host, he tells her that the Bible might say not to lie with another man, but it also says to burn your mother for wearing two different threads.

Faith is a great addition to the Democratic party, but it’s also worth mentioning how teed up scripture is to these kinds of arguments. Taken seriously, the injunction to love thy neighbor would work as solid evidence against almost any instance of unfairness. Would Jesus endorse freezing SNAP funding? Gutting Medicaid? WWJD?!

This is no surprise, either, since liberal democracy owes quite a lot to religion. To poorly sum up American history, the conundrum the revolutionaries were trying to solve was on what grounds they could declare independence from Great Britain. All rights since time immemorial came from politics — from regimes and law. That’s why the colonists first argued that they were British subjects entitled to the same representation as British citizens living on the continent. When they needed to argue from where they now had the authority to form their own government, they pivoted to the only answer left: God. Enter John Locke: Everyone has prior, indisputable rights that government does not endow but rather protects. God-given rights were a clever trick pulled out of the philosopher’s hat.

This is why Tocqueville wrote a century later that the spread of democracy was a “providential” fact for the rest of the world. To the extent that democratic government uniquely delivers on egalitarian concerns, this would be the only form of government created in God’s image. To struggle against democracy “would then seem tantamount to a struggle against God himself.” The whole world was barrelling towards democratic revolution. The river would not run backwards.

It seems I have solved all of our problems! We could all be on the same page if we just asked ourselves WWJD?. I actually thought this was a good argument for a second. Wrong. “Because Jesus told us to” is the easy answer to why we should treat people well. And actually, skipping to scripture takes for granted that we actually believe for ourselves that people are entitled to a basic quality of life. The truth is, if we followed these teachings that all men are created in God’s image, that we should “love thy neighbor,” or as Jews are fond of, everyone is “infinitely worthy,” then why is our track record so sketchy?

In his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom ruthlessly criticized American education for failing to teach our kids to question “whether men are really created equal or whether that opinion is merely a democratic prejudice.” You may be squirming in your seat right now. But all you need to test his claim is to look around. We don’t look, act, or sound the same. We all have different capabilities and challenges. Actually, the most obvious fact we could say is that we are not created equal. That’s what makes democratic government so tricky. It asserts an invisible equality over and against innumerable examples of inequality.

Stay with me. This revelation can be a hopeful point, not a fatal one. That we could assert an equality among us even when all of our senses tell us that cannot possibly be the case, that’s what makes our politics special. That’s why our founding documents can inspire us even as we fail to live up to their creed. So, if not religion, what does it take to buy in here?

…

I was struck recently rereading Plato’s Republic because it never occurred to me that God is absent. If you read anything from the Enlightenment, even though it’s all about “reason,” it’s also all about God. Take Locke: Do inalienable rights come from man’s capacity for reason or our creation in God’s image? They are really one and the same, and Locke benefited greatly from this murkiness.

But the gods whom Socrates and his interlocutors pray to seem more like Disney characters than spiritual advisors. There was Divine law in Athens, and Socrates was ultimately put to death for impiety, but religion occupies such a small place in their political theory. It hit me that Socrates and the philosophers had no scripture or societies past or passed to turn to. Plato writes in one of his letters, “We are born, not for ourselves alone.” From where does such a thought come from?

The Greeks had a truly unassisted belief in their fellow man; in man as man, not as an image of a higher order. They did not get everything right, far from it. But one cannot help but wonder how these people, who by all relevant standards could not possibly be called modern, stumbled upon the idea that men alone were destined to be just and free. No constitution. No bible. Without any surface beneath them, they succeeded in putting man on steady ground.

Anyone familiar with Plato might object that he insisted on philosopher-kings who ruled over everyone else. But even what critics (wrongly) call the “aristocratic” suggestion of the philosopher-kings is actually motivated by a fundamental belief in a shared humanity. Philosopher kings should rule not because they were chosen by God or inherited positions of wealth or property. They should rule because they have accessed philosophy. They are guided by human reason and can teach others. They make great rulers but nowhere are we led to believe they are worthier men.

The lesson I draw from the ancients is that our belief in each other does not, and likely can not, come from God. The test for whether we think everyone is worthy of living well does not hinge on whether religious figures or even our founders said it, but whether we have decided for ourselves that it should be so. Because – may we finally understand the meaning – it is self-evident.

That’s not to say that there is no place for religion in politics (I reject that notion completely) but that we should honestly ask ourselves whether we believe any teaching to be true. That’s what Bloom thought was missing from the generation of students he was teaching, the courage to test our assumptions and find out for ourselves whether (and why) we accept those assumptions as our own.

It’s in this context that I think we can appeal to the character of the democratic man, not the religious one. His capacity for untried things, willingness to reflect on his situation daringly, and appeal to make life better than it is. He believes in himself and others because he has figured out that he has to. We don’t need religion to tell us to “love thy neighbor.” The legacy of the ancients is that we may have all the proof we need here on earth.

I would like to take a stab at explaining why I read the classics. Why someone who prided themselves as concerned with the here and now cannot imagine what it would be like to not turn to the classics.

…

I knew nothing about Plato’s Republic when I first came to college. All I knew about Plato was that he was a philosopher from the ancient world, the kind of person that a bookish TV character might read, but not worthy of someone preoccupied with the present. I did not think he was urgent by any means. My impression of philosophy was the same — like science fiction, full of clunky words and half-truths, no basis for any claims, in the same family as tarot cards and fortune cookies.

But the Republic is not that kind of book so many fear philosophy will be. It is not a book that tells you what to think, explains how to live a good life, or is filled with pithy sentences destined to end up on cocktail napkins. The Republic is actually not really a book at all. It’s a fictional “dialogue” in the voice of Socrates who recounts how he stayed up all night with a group of friends to answer the question, “What would the just city look like?” It surprised me when I realized the plot of the foundational work of political thought was no different than a conversation a group of children might have (because only children seem to ask those kinds of questions that the rest of us find too naive). Maybe a text like this could not be anything else.

You will probably be surprised to learn that none of Plato’s dialogues are attributable to his own voice. All of his dialogues concern Socrates, his beloved teacher put to death by a jury of his peers for teaching men to be virtuous instead of worshipping the gods. On the surface, Plato’s dialogues are nothing more than a reconstruction of the conversations Socrates had across Athens in people’s homes and gardens about virtue, love, and politics.

One of Plato’s dialogues is a retelling of Socrates’ defense speech to the Athenian jury, where he refuses to apologize for teaching the youth about virtue. Another dialogue imagines his last days after he is sentenced to death. Friends come to his jail cell to offer him an escape. Instead, Socrates stays put and learns a new melody before he dies. He tells his friends that everything he has ever done has been out of love for Athens and its citizens. Why now, out of cowardice, should he decide he is too good to die by the city’s laws? Why should he assume that death is something to fear?

The reason I love reading Plato is not that he tells me what is right or wrong. I love reading Plato because the stories he tells about Socrates are so extraordinarily human. It is difficult to imagine that in a time of routine war and violence, when basic needs could not be met and plague, disease, and famine were as common as dirt, that these men took the time to sit down and ask each other, “Is it worse to do injustice or to suffer it?” They had no precedent to suffer the foolishness of their questions, and so they asked those questions that seem too probable to be real.

It wasn’t until the end of my college career that I understood what this was all for. When I realized that great thinking was not inaccessible but — maybe tragically — the opposite. I was moved by the simple fact that these Athenians who did not have all the advantages of modernity could access those conversations that are not just connected to the beginning of things but the end.

Now, when I feel too pulled into the news of the day or spun around by the sheer volume of crises playing out, I don’t check out completely. It’s impossible to do that. But I turn to those people who ask the fundamental questions. The funny thing is, they have no fundamental answers. Reading the classics does not give us the solutions to our problems. They teach us that asking questions can be a kind of truth. The knowledge that a question is available to us is sometimes all we need.

For example, when redistricting brought on plenty of hand-wringing, I did not go to the news or the opinion pages. I knew what they were going to say. Instead, I went to the bookstore and found a used copy of John Stuart Mill’s Considerations of Representative Government. Over 160 years ago, he wrestled with the problems of proportional representation. I started reading and asking… Is democracy about fair procedures or favorable outcomes?... If every vote is equal, does it really matter if a district is competitive?... If we care about being drawn into uncompetitive districts, are we admitting that casting a losing vote is meaningless?... Is the real problem here that voting is such a lame constituent of political equality?

John Stuart Mill did not have the right solutions. In fact, he proposed plural voting that gave educated people more votes. But he did not belong to a world that just assumed representative government was the ideal and uncomplicated answer to their problems, so he asked those questions that we may never come to on our own. That’s one of the lessons of Plato’s Republic. The “city in speech” that Socrates and his interlocutors create is anything but “the just city.” This is obvious from the very beginning of the conversation, and yet, they stay up all night because the question is still worth asking. So I do not go to the classics for the answers. That would be foolish. I agree with Tocqueville when he wrote, “We must not try to make ourselves like our fathers.” That would be unjust.

But the classics are not just the ancients, and they are often not about people who actually existed. I have only spoken about political philosophy so far, and that’s my own self-indulgence. What I am mostly thinking about when I speak about the classics are those novels we are all familiar with, even though most of us have never and will never read. Those books we think we can only appreciate from behind a desk.

And to that end, this is what I would like to say. The best reason we have to turn to the classics is not because they are classics but because they are great stories. And those books that someone told you were classics, well, if they don’t light a fire inside you, then that’s not a classic. Your classics are those stories you do not want to live without. I reject the idea that we read the classics out of responsibility or to pay tribute to history. What good does that do us?

So here is my final answer to why I turn to the classics, and I think this is the easiest one I can give. The reason I come to the classics is to hear Socrates’ last words when he realizes that the city he loves will soon put him to death. I come to the classics to know what Hamlet was thinking at the height of his longing when he saw his father’s ghost. I come to the classics to see the look on Michael Furey’s face when he decides he no longer wishes to live. The books that you consider your classics are those that make you feel that you are really living. Those stories that feel like they could have been written for you alone. How could a classic be anything else?