What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to… — Lewis Lapham

The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a folly" that was associated with the unruly ignorance of an urban mob.

Well aware of both the continuity and contingency of human affairs, Adams and Madison searched the works of Tacitus and Voltaire and Locke like carpenters rummaging through their assortment of tools, knowing that all the pediments were jury-rigged, all the provisional, all the alliances temporary.

Unlike every other other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.