“With liberty and justice for all.” So ends our pledge of allegiance. As a statement of aspiration, it shines. As a description of the condition of the nation, it burns a bit less brightly.

First off, it must be acknowledged that neither liberty nor justice has ever been equally apportioned. Some Americans have long enjoyed more of each than others.

In many respects, that gap has narrowed appreciably with racial healing and greater acceptance of personal choices, notwithstanding the distance still to travel. Though in other ways, the crevice has grown with the accelerating wealth divide.

It has long struck me that our two political parties approach that formulation of “liberty and justice” as an either-or proposition. That conjunction, the “and,” binding the two virtues, gets lost.

In their current construct, Republicans are the party of liberty and Democrats the party of justice. Of course, that is not absolute and exceptions can often be found. But think about where each party places the emphasis.

For Republicans, it is about opportunity, initiative, enterprise, motivation, less government intrusion and allowing people to keep the fruits of their labor. Add it together and that spells liberty.

On the flip side, Democrats prioritize leveling the playing field, lifting those lower on the ladder, relying on government for an expansive role and requiring those who prosper to pay more of the load. Whether the goal is equality, or equity in more modern parlance, it is an agenda centered on justice.

Look at the policies each party pursues. As a general rule, Republicans seek lower taxes, including for those at higher echelons. They argue for less regulatory interference, work requirements for public assistance and school choice that empowers parents and promotes competition.

Democrats disdain such work requirements, advocate for more progressive taxation and generally favor a more activist role for government regulation.

One is the party of the entrepreneur, the self-made man and the idea of bootstraps. The other represents the safety net, the so-called common man and the collective.

No doubt, contradictions abound. Too many Republicans resist liberty and freedom for those with different lifestyles and social mores. A whole lot of Democrats place excessive trust in the supposed best and brightest to exercise outsized control in agencies far removed from any political accountability.

As the parties have redefined themselves, Republicans, the longtime party of strivers and those who made it, increasingly represent a constituency of folks who struggle and feel left behind. Conversely, Democrats, historically the advocates of the forgotten, are now a wraparound collection of those at the very top and bottom of the income scale. They are simultaneously the party of Silicon Valley and inner-city Baltimore.

And, to be clear, both liberty-folk and justice-sorts are all too happy to stick coming generations with the tab for today’s gluttonous spending. How nice that there is something which brings the parties together.

Let me submit that there is one other notable commonality between the two parties and two ideologies these days. That shared feature, unbecoming to both, is a growing illiberalism.

Both parties in the current era are vastly more ideologically pure, monolithic and bordering on the extreme than has long been the case. As the country has sorted into rival red and blue teams, the moderate Republican and the conservative Democrat have gone extinct for all practical purposes.

The likes of Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Joe Manchin are notable now for their rarity. They should be added to the endangered species list.

The outgrowth of this sorting is that the epicenter of the Republican Party has shifted hard to the right and that of the Democratic Party has moved discernibly to the left. Neither party represents anything resembling a big ideological tent.

On both poles, ideological rigidity and conformity have bred an insularity and intolerance that serve neither the interests of liberty nor justice.

Look around. On the right, book bans are all the rage and only a sanitized version of history can be taught. Drag queens have emerged as a mortal threat. To say little of the fundamental illiberalism of refusing to recognize or honor the results of an election.

But the left, once heralded as beacons of live-and-let-live acceptance, are more than a match in these Olympics of dogmatic narrow-mindedness.

Years ago bastions of free speech, universities are now anything but. Speech codes proliferate. Disagreeable speakers are uninvited or shouted down. Slavery has replaced independence as the country’s foundational doctrine. Professors are ridiculed or, worse, terminated for venturing a heterodox thought. On and off campus, religious convictions are belittled. Anything less than total compliance with politically correct norms cannot stand.

The left-leaning high priests of vaunted tolerance are no longer preaching that old catechism.

Across the world, autocrats are on a roll. Here at home, too many on both political ends exhibit instincts all too common to such authoritarians.

To be sure, there are countless millions somewhere around the political center who reject both extremes and uphold quaint ideals of moderation and free speech. However, sadly, they live quieter lives often removed from the political noise and do not provide the system with its juice and animation.

What little there is that connects liberty proponents on the right and justice seekers on the left is a mutual intolerance. Those in both camps ever more define themselves by their tribal identity. The strongest element of that affiliation is an undisguised hatred for those on the other side along with an inclination to silence rather than engage them.

Think back to the pledge of allegiance. What immediately precedes the concluding principles of “liberty and justice?”

That prior word is “indivisible.” Wish it were so.