This excerpt originally appeared in United Press International on June 28, 2012.

Nearly 240 years have passed since America first declared its independence. Since then, our population has become healthier, better sheltered and more mobile than our 18th-century counterparts. The poorest of us today live lives that would have been science fiction to the country's founders. These changes make it easy to dismiss the founders' ideas about the proper role of government in society as "quaint." Yet, we would be wrong to do so.