The most striking point J. Cullen makes in his chapter on the Declaration of Independence is his assertion that before the Declaration and the Revolution, freedom was something free, Englishmen in the colonies had and after that freedom became something they and others dreamed of having. Before, it was something to be preserved; after, it was something longed for, even fought for.
This suggests that American freedom is a bit like faith as presented in the epistle to the Hebrews: the assurance of things unseen. Indeed, the distance between American ideals and American reality is the space in which the dream exists, but only if there is an expectation that the gap can be closed. If America is predicated on a dream, or on having a dream, the eschatology is always marked by longing rather than fulfillment
Perpetual change is hardwired into our expectations and our rhetoric.
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