[E]mancipation cannot be so easily detached from union (which is another way of saying that racial justice and liberal democracy rise or fall with ea… - Allen C. Guelzo

[I]n a liberal democracy, sovereignty lies in the people at large; and our governing structures exist to implement that will.

[T]he wall of separation between public and private higher education has been eroding for the last half-century. Funding from public sources now constitutes the bulk of higher-education resources in the United States, whether in the form of government subventions for research and programs, or in the much vaster influx of government-guaranteed student loans. For all realistic purposes, the distinction between public and private higher education has ceased to exist. Further, the vast numbers of young American adults being drawn in to the college and university system (some 20.4 million, up by 25 percent from 2000 alone)—on the assumption that college degrees are virtually a sine qua non of entrance into profitable commerce or lucrative professions—has evaporated what little is left of the pretense that academe constitutes some monastic realm, beyond the orbit of civil society.

The political idealism of the Revolution also encouraged, and sometimes forced, white slave owners to liberate their slaves.