What Would Ben Do?

As we wrap up 2025 and head into 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I’ve read two things recently that give me hope that our democracy and the principles it was founded on remain strong, despite what media and algorithms are trying to tell us. 

The first is a book by Walter Isaacson that was just published called The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.    

Isaacson writes big books. They’re big in the subject matters they tackle, including some of the most consequential people in history, like Leonardo DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein. 

They’re big in size too, usually running more than 600 pages - a heavy lift. 

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, however, is tiny in comparison, only 41 pages (plus appendices). In it, he examines the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “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.” 

He walks through each of the sentence’s phrases and discusses some of the conflicts and semantic disagreements that arose among our founders as they drafted it. 

“Franklin and Jefferson understood balance,” Isaacson writes.  “They were part of an Enlightenment era that embraced the scientific method of testing and revising beliefs based on evidence. Compromisers may not make great heroes, Franklin likes to say, but they do make great democracies.” 

Of course, Isaacson points out that the art of compromise appears to be lost these days among our political leaders, but he argues that our democracy has always been a bottom-up, self-governing affair, where individuals and communities, not politicians, have the real power to lead progress and change. 

As he looks ahead, he says we should all be more like Ben Franklin. “He organized police, fire, and street-sweeping corps; a public library, hospital, and school; a widows’ pension fund and a mutual insurance cooperative,” he writes. “And on his deathbed, he was the largest individual donor to the Congregation Mikveh Israel, the first synagogue in Philadelphia.” 

Upon his death, Franklin had 20,000 mourners line his funeral procession in Philadelphia, led by clergymen of all faiths, walking arm-in-arm. 

Franklindidn’t need the office of the presidency to make his America great. He rallied his local community to find common cause and just got things done. And, in his spare time, he was a key drafter ofliterally every document that founded our country.   

A similar ethos comes out in a recent column in The Free Press written by Colleen Shogan and titled “Where Democracy Still Works.” 

In the piece, Shogan describes an event she and her husband attended in western Virginia celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.   

She wrote: “As I enjoyed the band, I observed the crowd: old and young, black and white, gay and straight. 

“Despite their differences, these neighbors clearly knew one another and had chosen to gather for a shared historic purpose that evening. They greeted each other with warmth and familiarity, chatting about local matters and recognizing the veterans in the crowd. Their conversations indicated a diversity of political opinions, yet they equally demonstrated respect and care for the members of their community. It was a striking everyday example illustrating the strength and resilience of American democracy, which often goes unnoticed in today’s discourse.” 

She goes on to cite other examples of civic engagement that demonstrate the vitality of our democracy on a local level: parents and teachers who formed microschools and learning pods during the pandemic; Vermont residents digging each other out of the mud from the 2023 floods; food banks, churches, restaurants, and schools feeding the hungry during the government shutdown. 

As we move into the new year, it would be cool to make a collective resolution to be more like Franklin, as Isaacson suggests. Maybe we can all just take a breath, look around, see the people in our presence who can benefit from our help, and lend a hand. 

That’s what real democracy should look like.