Opinion: Beyond Kamala or Trump, This Is the One Thing We Should All Vote For

We’re almost there, folks. The presidential election is nearly upon us, and not a second too soon. We are a people on edge because, while the specific issues at play are familiar enough, the election’s underlying narrative is about something more fundamental than immigration policy, tax policy, foreign policy. The central issue is none of those things. Instead, the unarticulated question at the heart of this election isn’t what do we want to do, but who do we want to be?

The U.S. is a strange country, the first nation created around an idea. That idea—self-governance of the people by the people—was a radical one. Could a nation of Calvinists and corporatists somehow figure out how to create a peaceable governance stripped of primogeniture? Could thirteen colonies with disparate customs and cultures forge a union whose legitimacy doesn’t rest at the point of a bayonet?

It's also a strange country because of who inhabits it. For the most part, we American citizens are not descended from centuries of native stock. Most of us cannot trace our American ancestry back more than a few generations. We arrived by ship and plane, sometimes by our own free will and sometimes not. We are the sons and daughters of merchants and ministers, sinners and slaves.

Read more at The Daily Beast.