Exodus and America

In Federalist #1, Alexander Hamilton famously declares that the nascent American nation faces the task of answering a timeless political question: “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” The best of the American political tradition has spent more than two centuries answering Hamilton’s query by elevating choice and rejecting accident and force.