Last evening, having just finished a book (my second) by the brilliant theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, I was looking intently at my bookshelves. For some reason my eyes were drawn to "These Truths---A History of the United States" by Jill Lepore (2018). I took hold of the book and immediately noticed a single yellow sticky attached to one of the pages in the book's introduction. When I opened the volume to see what had made an impression on me, I saw that it was a description of late October 1787 when the states were debating the adoption of a new constitution and Alexander Hamilton had penned (anonymously) THE FEDERALIST No. 1. Hamilton was many things---some good, others less worthy of approbation. But he was prescient. He recognized that the United States was "an experiment in the science of politics, marking a new era in the history of government." Lepore's words are worth quoting at length and reading slowly and carefully:
"This was the question of that autumn. And, in a way, it has been the question of every season since, the question of every rising and setting of the sun, on rainy days and snowy days, on clear and cloudy days, at the clap of every thunderstorm. Can a political society really be governed by reflection and election, by reason and truth, rather than by accident and violence, by prejudice and deceit? Is there any arrangement of government---any constitution---by which it's possible for a people to rule themselves, justly and fairly, and as equals, through exercise of judgment and care? Or are their efforts, no matter their constitutions, fated to be corrupted, their judgment muddled by demagoguery, their reason abandoned for fury?"
As I read and re-read and ponder the words of this passage, I worry that my generation---we grew into adulthood with Woodstock, the Apollo moon landing, the Civil Rights Movement, protests against the War in Vietnam, baby steps toward women's equality, Bobby Kennedy, Nixon, and Watergate---has, in the end, failed to live up to its responsibilities and that history will judge us harshly for damaging---perhaps irretrievably---the extraordinary experiment in government that is written into our Constitution and is our nation's history.