John Adams' Fear Has Come to Pass

When I try to explain the aspirational genius of the American founding, I always refer to two documents -- one of them one of the most famous documents in the English language, the other far more obscure. They're by the famous "frenemies" of the American founding, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The first, of course, is Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The second is Adams's very short Letter to the Massachusetts Militia, dated October 11, 1798. In two pairs of sentences these documents define the American social compact -- the mutual responsibilities of citizen and state -- that define the American experiment.