Allen presents the Declaration as a key work of political philosophy, since it poses the question, “are we living well, this group of people to which I somehow belong?” (107). She notes that many people might consider the declaration’s claim that all people are equal to be absurd because they assume equal means “the same,” and it is obvious not all people are equally rich or intelligent. So the Declaration’s equality must be something else—“an equivalent degree of some quality or attribute” (107). Freedom seems equally confusing, since we are all bound by laws and constrained by our material circumstances, and may feel that politics doesn’t truly free us. The Declaration’s equality is “when neither of two parties can dominate the other” (107). Its other attributes consist of “egalitarian development of collective intelligence,” “reciprocity” in citizen relationships with each other, and a sense that we are “co-creating our common world” (108-9). But even before it lays out this vision, the Declaration shows us how people make decisions about their lives.

The Declaration’s opening sentence is so long that Allen spends most of a chapter with its first few words: “when in the course of human events” (109).