During the 2013 government shutdown, I was in Philadelphia, and I was surprised to find that the Liberty Bellwas “closed.” You could stand there and look at it, but only through tourist-smudged glass.

This time around, the Liberty Bell Center and other buildings that are part of Independence National Historical Park are closed again. But the National Park Service makes a point of saying that they “remain as accessible as possible,” while Philadelphia’s tourism bureau helpfully notes that “the Liberty Bell can still be viewed through a window on the east side of its building.”

It’s a small but telling difference between this shutdown and previous ones. In the past, the public has blamed the shutdown on the opposition party in Congress. And the president, who has operational command of the

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