The issue today is the same as it has been.

Here’s a quote. Let’s play “Who said it?”

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”

OK, so was it Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign? Was it William F. Buckley in a column at National Review? Or perhaps the redoubtable Dr. Charles Krauthammer on the FOX News Channel. Or was it Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign?

The answer: none of the above.

Though the words certainly resonate in today’s fractious political climate, they were uttered more than 200 years ago by Thomas Jefferson, whose long list of accomplishments includes principal authorship of the Declaration of Independence.

That those words have such resonance more than two centuries later tells us that the basic questions facing societies never really change. Though independence from the tyranny of King George III of Great Britain was won in 1783, and though our Constitution was ratified six years later, the question remains on the table. Are we going to govern ourselves or are we going to abdicate that duty and forfeit that hard-won right in favor of the ministrations of a ruling elite?

That is the question that is on the ballot this coming Tuesday and it transcends Donald Trump’s outsized, and to many, off-putting personality, and it transcends any significance that might be attached to the possibility of electing the first female U.S. president.

One vision of America is that of a nation filled with hard-working, decent people who want the freedom to live their own lives and pursue their own dreams and aspirations, do their part to pay the taxes that are necessary for a limited, but properly functioning government and otherwise order their own lives and dispose of the fruits of their own labors as they, themselves see fit.

The other vision is that of a nation that is overseen by a small cohort of über-educated elites imbued with the power to order our lives down to what and how much we eat, where we live, how we transport ourselves and how we raise our children.

In the last third of the preceding century, the encroachment of that latter vision accelerated in government, academia and our cultural institutions. Those who have gained wealth, power and influence under that governing vision are loath to give it up, even as those in the great American middle class living in the heartland and doing most of the work that keeps the country running, have experienced incremental decline in wealth, power and influence.

Thus, the rabid hatred for Donald Trump, who, rejecting the politesse of Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney, dared to call the elites out. Today’s top Democrats, who bear little resemblance to the FDR and JFK Democrats of previous generations, despise Donald Trump because of the existential threat to their power that he represents.

So, Jefferson was right. The issue today is, indeed, the same as it has been throughout all history.