A Republic, if You Can Read It

A Republic, If You Can Read It

A couple months back I stood in the entrance hall of Thomas Jefferson's house with my best friend and my dog. Monticello. If you've never been, that front hall isn't decorated — it's loaded. Mastodon bones. Maps. Artifacts Lewis and Clark shipped back from the frontier. Busts of Jefferson's rivals staring across the room at busts of his heroes. The man designed his own foyer to start arguments. He built a waiting room whose entire purpose was to force you to think for yourself.

Last night I learned something that would have broken his heart. I ran the numbers — the actual math, on the actual document, backed by the government's own data — on how many Americans can still read the Declaration of Independence. Not recite a line of it. Read it. Understand it the way it was written to be understood. The answer is about thirteen percent. One in eight of us.

But before I show you that math, I have to make a confession, because I don't get to write this essay without it.

Until last night, I had never actually read the Declaration of Independence.

I'm a reader. Have been my whole life.

I'll tell you how I got to be a reader, because it's the whole argument in one story. My mother — a woman with a GED — pulled me out of school in the third grade and homeschooled me. Her reasoning was simple, and it was sharper than anything a committee of education experts has produced since: the boy can comprehend what he reads. That was the entire bet. Not that she could teach me every subject. That if I could truly comprehend what I read, I could teach myself anything. Because comprehension is the most important part of learning — full stop. If you can comprehend what you're reading, what you're watching, it almost doesn't matter where the teaching comes from. You're still going to learn. A woman with a GED understood that better than the system did. She bet my whole education on it.

I've read Melville more than once because I wanted to. I did my homework before that Monticello trip like I was studying for a final. I would have told you, honestly, that I knew the Declaration. And like most Americans, what I knew was the preamble — the greatest hits, the part on the coffee mugs. Last night, arguing with an AI at my kitchen table, I finally read the whole thing. All 1,335 words of it. The famous part, and then the part almost nobody talks about: twenty-seven numbered grievances, an itemized receipt of everything a king did to a people before those people decided they were done.

I read it at whatever age I am, on a random Friday night, and it scared the hell out of me. We'll get to why.

The numbers nobody wants to say out loud

Here's what the data says about the country that document belongs to.

More than half of American adults — 54 percent, roughly 130 million people — read below a sixth-grade level. That's not a meme number; it comes from a Gallup analysis of U.S. Department of Education data, and Snopes traced the number back to the government data and found it legitimate. The average American adult reads at about a seventh-to-eighth-grade level. In the government's own 2023 adult skills assessment, 28 percent of us scored at the lowest literacy level or below it — meaning short, simple texts are about the ceiling. And it's getting worse, not better: average literacy scores dropped twelve points just between 2017 and 2023.

Now hold that up against the document.

I ran the Declaration of Independence — the National Archives transcription, the real thing — through the standard readability test schools and publishers use. It scores at a 16th-grade reading level. Not high school. College senior. Its sentences average thirty-one words. And that test doesn't even charge extra for "hath shewn," or "consanguinity," or sentences that make you hold your breath for forty words waiting on the verb.

The same government data tells us exactly what share of American adults can handle text like that — long, dense, complex, meaning tucked between the lines. Thirteen percent.

So here is the sentence I couldn't shake last night, and the reason this essay exists:

The founding argument of the United States of America can now be truly read by about one in eight of its citizens. The rest of us are governed by a promise we can no longer read.

More Americans today can't get through a simple text than can get through the Declaration. If that doesn't raise red flags, I don't know what can.

We built this. Then we tore it down.

Here's the part that makes it worse, not better: it wasn't always like this, and the way it used to be isn't the way you think.

A hundred and fifty years ago, the farmhand in these mountains wasn't reading Melville either — about a fifth of Americans couldn't read at all. But then this country did something no country had ever done. We built the most literate population in human history, and we did it fast. And I'll tell you something that'll twist some folks up: the engine of it was church. Let me be plain before I go further, because regular readers know me — I am not a religious man. But facts are facts whether they land on my side or not; that's the entire point of this essay. And this one is a fact. The whole premise of American Protestantism was that every plowboy reads scripture for himself — no priest required, no middleman between a man and the words. Sunday schools were teaching reading before public schools existed. And the Bible those great-grandparents read cold, the King James, tests at about a twelfth-grade level itself.

We climbed that mountain for a century. Literacy up, schooling up, comprehension up. Somewhere late in the last century we hit the summit. And then — right about the time the phones showed up — we turned around and started walking back down. Test scores falling since 2012. Book reading cratering. A generation measurably worse at reading than their parents — the first time that's happened since we started measuring.

"We've always been dumb" would be a shrug. That's not what happened. We built the antenna, and then we took it down. And the tradition that built it so nobody would have to take a preacher's word for anything has become a base that takes the preacher's word for everything — because now it has no other option. That's not faith. That's dependency wearing faith's clothes.

What the old books were actually for

I hear the pushback already: who cares if people can't read some crusty old documents and dead Greeks?

Here's who cared: the illiterate farmers and sailors Homer performed for. The Odyssey wasn't written for professors — it was spoken out loud to people who couldn't read a word, and they understood exactly why Odysseus, finally home in Ithaca after twenty years, didn't just walk in the front door and announce he was king. They felt his caution in their bones, because the story was engineered to carry that feeling to ordinary people. Dante wrote the Inferno in street Italian instead of scholarly Latin, on purpose, so common people could walk the ledges of hell and come out the other side better than they went in. The classics were never elite artifacts. They were the mass entertainment of their day, and the human struggle was smuggled inside the entertainment.

That's what deep reading actually is. It's not information transfer. It's the only machine ever invented that installs another human being's inner life into your head. You are someone else for three hundred pages. Researchers keep finding that people who've read a lot of fiction are measurably better at reading other people. They're still fighting over the lab details — but the pattern across a lifetime of readers keeps showing up. Reading isn't adjacent to empathy. Reading is the technology FOR empathy.

So when a country loses reading, it doesn't just lose facts. It loses the practice of being someone else. And a population that can't be someone else for even a paragraph will believe anything you tell it about its neighbors — because it has no equipment left to check the claim against.

That's why the labels work now. "Communist." "Enemy." "Fascist," thrown at whoever's handy. A label isn't an argument; it's a sticker. And stickers are precisely the right weapon for an audience that can't read the rebuttal.

The founders would like a word about the stickers

Since we're on words meaning things — let me show you what actually happened at the drafting table in 1776, because the people who misquote the founders loudest have clearly never read the editing history.

Jefferson's first draft of the most famous sentence in American history read: "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." Benjamin Franklin struck it. He replaced "sacred" — a truth God vouches for — with "self-evident" — a truth reason vouches for. The one openly devotional word in that sentence was deliberately deleted, by a founder, in favor of the language of thinking for yourself. Twenty-one years later, the Senate unanimously ratified — and John Adams signed — a treaty stating flat out that the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. Jefferson coined "wall of separation between church and state," wrote Virginia's law guaranteeing every person the right to find their own God on whatever path they choose, and put that law on his tombstone — the presidency didn't make the cut.

These weren't men against faith. They were men against anybody's faith being government-issued. They believed, with everything they had, in the argument itself. Adams and Jefferson ran the ugliest campaign in early American history against each other — real demonization, hired slander, the works — and then spent the last fourteen years of their lives repairing it in 158 letters, arguing philosophy as friends, because the argument was the point. They died hours apart on the same day: July 4th, 1826. Fifty years, to the day.

And Jefferson, standing in front of the party he had just beaten, said the sentence that answers our entire era: "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Wrong opinions get argued with. They do not get declared enemies.

You cannot know any of this — you cannot even suspect it — if you can't read the documents. So the documents get replaced by stickers, and the stickers get worshipped, and somebody sells you a country the founders specifically edited out of existence. White Christian nationalism isn't a reading of the founding documents. It's what grows in the space where the reading used to be.

The twenty-seven receipts

Which brings me back to Friday night, and the part of the Declaration nobody reads.

After the coffee-mug preamble, Jefferson writes one line that I now think is the most American sentence ever put on paper: "To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

Receipts first. In 1776. And then he itemizes — twenty-seven grievances, the full accounting of how a free people gets ground down. Read a few of them slowly. Don't rush.

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice."

"He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone."

"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people."

"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power."

"For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences."

"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury."

I'm not going to stand here and tell you what those grievances remind you of. That's the whole point of this essay: I shouldn't have to, and if I did, you'd be right not to take my word for it. Go read them yourself — all twenty-seven, ten minutes, link in the sources below — and hold them up against the news in your own two hands. Do your own math. Come to your own conclusions. That right, the freedom to digest information yourself and land where the evidence takes you, is the thing the whole document exists to protect. It's also the first thing that dies when a country can't read.

I'll only say what happened to me: I read that list for the first time at my kitchen table, 250 years after it was written, and my blood ran cold. Not because the history was news to me. Because the accumulation did exactly what Jefferson engineered it to do — to anyone who can still receive the transmission.

The document still works. There just aren't many of us left on the frequency.

If you can keep it

The men who wrote all this were not naive about people. Madison said the quiet part in Federalist 51: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." He knew there are no angels. So he built a machine designed for non-angels — ambition checking ambition, power jealous of power — a system meant to survive human nature the way you build a lathe guard assuming the operator will eventually do something stupid. Because that's the truth underneath everything: the loftiest ideas ever put on paper only go as far as human nature allows before human nature steps in and upends the best intentions of the most honest man. Every system fails there. Every single one — and I'll step on both sides' toes to prove I mean it, because "the rich will let it trickle down" died on the same hill as "the people will do right unwatched."

But Madison's machine has one load-bearing part he couldn't engineer around. The whole apparatus only works if enough people at the bottom can SEE when it's being gamed. Congress only checks a president if voters can read well enough to know the check didn't happen. A constitution read by a country that can't read is just furniture.

Franklin knew it on day one. Walking out of the Constitutional Convention, asked what they'd made, he answered: "A republic, if you can keep it." That was never a promise. It was a dare — and the keeping turns out to require the reading.

We are not the first round of this fight, and that's the one hopeful thing I can honestly offer you. In 1798 — twenty-two years after the Declaration — the government passed a law jailing editors for criticizing it. Sound familiar? Jefferson and Madison fought it, the country read its way through the argument, voted out the men behind it within two years, and the law died with them. The founders didn't hand us a country where disagreement was safe. They handed us the ARGUMENT about whether it would be. Their side won round one. What's breaking hearts in 2026 is watching the other side win a round — while most of the crowd can no longer read the scorecard.

Where I've been, where I'm going

I spent most of my life fighting for these ideas, even the years I didn't know that's what I was doing. Fifteen years in uniform before they medically retired me. A lifetime in these mountains after. And I'll be honest with you the way I try to be honest about everything: I'm tired. I don't know that I've got the fight left in me at the level this fight now needs — not for something so many people throw away without ever once reading what they're throwing.

So in a few months, my dog and I are leaving. South. New continent, new mountains, waterfalls and capybaras and rally car races — a right I figure fifteen years and change bought me fair and square. Some people will call that quitting the fight. But go back and look at 1776 one more time. The people who wrote that document were not the ones who stayed in England to fix England. They were the ones who looked at a homeland that had stopped being what it claimed, got on boats, went somewhere new, and built. Leaving wasn't the opposite of the founding. Leaving WAS the founding.

Is it totally lost here? I don't think so. I hope it isn't. I'm leaving that door cracked on purpose, and this essay is me holding it open on my way out: the whole case, receipts first, submitted to a candid world — the twelfth-grade-reading-level way and, God willing, someday the fourth-grade way too, because Homer met his audience where they stood and I intend to meet mine.

Words mean things. The sources are below. Argue with them, not me.

— A.D.B.

Sources

Declaration of Independence, full National Archives transcription: archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

Gallup / U.S. Dept. of Education analysis — 54% of U.S. adults (ages 16–74) below 6th-grade level: apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy (and Snopes' review of the claim: snopes.com "Do More Than Half of Americans Read Below 6th-Grade Level?")

OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) 2023, U.S. country note — 13% at literacy Levels 4/5; 28% at/below Level 1: oecd.org, "Survey of Adult Skills 2023: United States"

NCES PIAAC 2023 U.S. national results — score declines 2017→2023: nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023

Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade level 16.2, computed on the Archives transcription (1,335 words, 31 words/sentence avg)

PolitiFact, July 9, 2026 — fact-check of "Democrats are communists" claims

Jefferson's draft edits ("sacred and undeniable" → "self-evident"): monticello.org / Library of Congress, Jefferson's "original Rough draught"

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 (1797), ratified unanimously, signed by John Adams

Federalist No. 51 (Madison); Jefferson's First Inaugural Address (1801); Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786)

Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (for the definitions companion post)

Appendix: The Receipts — Bullet by Bullet

The plain-English list in the companion post translates the Declaration's grievances. Here is a receipt for every one of them — from the courts, the government's own documents, and outlets across the spectrum. Don't take my word. Check them.

"He blocked laws the people needed." Congress passes spending into law. Starting January 2025, the White House froze and canceled billions Congress had already passed — grants, loans, programs. Federal judges blocked the freeze; the Government Accountability Office found multiple illegal impoundments. (AP; GAO decisions, 2025)

"He got in the way of the courts doing their job." An Associated Press review found federal judges ruled the administration violated court orders in at least 31 lawsuits since February 2025 — plus more than 250 separate noncompliance findings in individual immigration cases. One federal judge counted 96 violations of court orders in his district in January 2026 alone. The Washington Post found the administration accused of defying orders in over a third of the 165 cases it lost. (AP review, May 2026; Washington Post, 2025)

"He made the judges answer to him. Him alone." He publicly called for impeaching judges who ruled against him — which drew a rare public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreeing with a ruling. The Vice President called for removing judges who rule against the administration. The DOJ sued the entire federal bench of Maryland. (Roberts' statement, March 2025; AP)

"He built a pile of new government offices. Then sent swarms of officers out to harass everyday people." The July 2025 spending bill funded roughly 10,000 new ICE agents — one of the largest law-enforcement expansions in U.S. history, reported everywhere including Fox News. Masked, unidentified federal agents making street arrests became routine enough that judges and mayors demanded identification requirements. (DHS announcements; AP; Fox News, 2025)

"He put the military above the regular law." Troops were sent into American cities for domestic law enforcement over the objection of governors — and when challenged, courts found some deployments unlawful. A federal judge ruled the Portland deployment was untethered to the facts on the ground. (Newsom v. Trump; U.S. District Court, Oregon, Oct 2025; AP)

"He put soldiers in the people's own towns. In peacetime. Without asking them." June 2025: ~4,000 National Guard troops and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles over the governor's objection. Then Washington DC. Then Chicago, Portland, Memphis. Every one of these was on every channel — pick your favorite. (AP; Reuters; DoD announcements, 2025)

"He protected his own men from punishment with fake trials. Even for killing." Day one, January 20, 2025: blanket clemency for ~1,500 January 6th defendants — including hundreds convicted of assaulting police officers. Convictions erased by one signature. Covered by AP, Reuters, and Fox News alike. (Presidential proclamation, Jan 20, 2025)

"He cut off trade with the rest of the world." 2025's unilateral global tariffs pushed the average U.S. tariff rate to its highest level in roughly a century. Trade with allies and rivals alike was cut off or taxed by one man's signature — no vote taken. (U.S. Customs data; every business page in America, 2025)

"He made people pay taxes they never voted for." Don't take my word — take the Supreme Court's. February 20, 2026, Learning Resources v. Trump, 6-3, Chief Justice Roberts writing: the emergency-powers law does NOT let a president impose tariffs, because tariffs are taxes and taxing belongs to Congress. The exact grievance from 1776, ruled on in 2026. (Supreme Court of the United States, Feb 20, 2026)

"He took away trial by jury." People were deported under an 18th-century wartime law with no hearing at all — until the Supreme Court ordered that detainees must get notice and a real chance to challenge their removal. Judges have since documented hundreds of cases of people held or removed in violation of court orders. (SCOTUS orders, April–May 2025; AP)

"He shipped people across the ocean to be tried for made-up crimes." March 2025: 200+ Venezuelan men flown to a mega-prison in El Salvador — many with no criminal record, some identified as gang members by their tattoos. In one case the administration admitted in court the deportation was an "administrative error" — then fought the return order for months. When a judge ordered the planes stopped, El Salvador's president posted "Oopsie, too late" — and the U.S. Secretary of State shared it. (Court filings; AP; NPR, 2025)

"He tried to stop newcomers from ever becoming citizens." A day-one executive order attempted to end birthright citizenship — the one written into the 14th Amendment. A June 2025 DOJ memo directed prioritizing denaturalization — taking citizenship back from naturalized Americans. (Executive order, Jan 2025; DOJ memo, June 2025; AP)

"He shut down the people's representatives when they stood up to him." A sitting U.S. Senator was forcibly removed and handcuffed at a DHS press conference for asking a question. A congresswoman was criminally charged after an oversight visit to an ICE facility. And in November 2025, the President posted that lawmakers who reminded service members they can refuse illegal orders had committed "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH." His words, his account, still up. (Video of the Padilla incident, June 2025; DOJ charges; the President's own posts, Nov 2025)

"He turned the people against each other." "The enemy from within." Democrats are "hard core, godless Communists." And the quiet part, said out loud to reporters in August 2024: "All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country." That's not my analysis of the trick. That's him explaining the trick. (AP Fact Focus, July 2026; PolitiFact, July 9, 2026)

Every line above is public record. Court rulings, government documents, his own posts. The men who wrote the original list in 1776 called it "let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

Consider them submitted.