So I thought I’d check in before you sent out a search party or got too happy that I had disappeared from sight.

I’ve been on a quick trip in Virginia visiting relatives. Right now, I staying in an Aloft hotel in Winchester. The room was exceedingly cheap, and the lobby is really sort of fun, with a pool table, bar, and decent music in the lobby. I’d give it a bunch of stars.

On the election: In Georgia, the truth is that Michelle Nunn will probably win. She is a better candidate and has an effective media campaign branding David Perdue as an oligarchic outsourcer. The reason that’s worked is that it is pretty true. Call him the Romney of Georgia. I could be wrong on this, but there is a real trend in the polls.

So in general, as Pete has explained, the election should be a Republican “wave,” but, at least for the Senate, it’s pretty much a toss-up. The Republican candidates are actually better than they’ve been lately, and so the (likely) disappointing result, I think, will be justly blamed on lackluster campaigns and “playing defense,” as opposed to being fearlessly offensive.

What’s more scary? Ebola, or the collapse of the stock market for people depending on the ol’ 401(k) and nearing retirement? That’s actually an easy question.

One downside of the Aloft is that I can’t figure how to cut and paste links on their computer. For that reason, I have to ask you to do the irksome work of going to the Law and Liberty site and reading our friend Paul Seaton’s very instructive and subtle review of Danielle Allen’s heartfelt but too-ingenious book on the Declaration of Independence. Paul’s review is praised by the loving dad W. B. Allen (another good friend of ours) as the best on the book so far.

Paul’s most provocative and important point: Allen does well in highlighting how messy the composition of the Declaration really was. But she doesn’t know what to do with the FACT that Jefferson’s draft was transformed theologically: First, “Nature’s God” became the Creator. And later, he also become a providential and judgmental (or more insistently and intrusively) personal God. The Declaration began with the “rational theism” that was the public face of the Enlightenment, but it then became more Biblical/Christian.

Paul adds that Michael Zuckert, in his hyper-Lockean view of the Declaration, doesn’t know to do with that transformation either. The Zuckert view is that concessions were made to the Christians in Congress without any real change being made to the Declaration’s natural-rights content. That would make the true interpretation of the Declaration a version of the “political esotercism” that Arthur Melzer (in his great new book on reading between the lines) describes as fueling the Enlightenment. One trouble with that interpretation is that it opens us to a “progressive” interpretation of America becoming more consistently individualistic and publicly atheistic over time. Another problem is that you have to interpret a text in light of the intention of its author. In this case, the author isn’t Jefferson but “Congress.” The Declaration was a legislative compromise, and “the American mind” is the outcome of that process of deliberation. If you don’t think that, it’s because you really think the “the philosopher” Locke teaches an undemocratic truth that reveals itself publicly over time. A third problem, as Paul suggests, is that devotion to equality — or the equally irreplaceable significance of very human person — really can’t be rooted in the impersonal indifference of “Nature’s God” (or the God of the philosophers in general). Well, more problem: Mr. Jefferson’s personal devotion to equality — to, most of all, abolishing race-based slavery — was pretty bleepin’ lacking, despite his beautiful rhetorical flourishes.