Many of us have favorite stories we can recite by heart. They may be bedtime stories we heard as children – stories we repeat to the young people in our lives. We may know the stories of our families – where we came from and how we arrived where we are now. Some of these stories are fairy tales or tall tales, some have unfavorable points of departure, but most have happy endings.
These stories are unlikely to be political in the broadest sense because political regimes have miserable endings. Every regime in the history of the world has collapsed. In large part, this is because the foundations or beginnings were insufficiently strong, remembered, and recited to ward off the inevitable storms of political life.
America, so far, is exceptional in that it still exists after nearly 250 years and public attention, albeit insufficient, is still being paid to its founding principles. It helps that the story of America’s founding is neither a fairy tale nor a bedtime story. We claim it as a good story. Besides, who can love an ugly founding?
