John Adams wrote in 1798 that the Constitution “was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Most people treat that as sermon material. Inspirational filler for civics classes.
It’s not.
It’s engineering analysis.
Adams wasn’t moralizing. He was identifying a structural dependency. The Constitution’s design assumes internal restraint. Without that restraint, the system fails. The mechanisms stop working. The parchment becomes irrelevant.
The sentence before that famous quote reveals the collapse mechanism: “Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
When internal discipline disappears, external force becomes structurally necessary.
https://open.substack.com/...
Most people treat that as sermon material. Inspirational filler for civics classes.
It’s not.
It’s engineering analysis.
Adams wasn’t moralizing. He was identifying a structural dependency. The Constitution’s design assumes internal restraint. Without that restraint, the system fails. The mechanisms stop working. The parchment becomes irrelevant.
The sentence before that famous quote reveals the collapse mechanism: “Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
When internal discipline disappears, external force becomes structurally necessary.
https://open.substack.com/...
The Constitution Requires What We've Stopped Teaching
Unsettling truths from the margins of the law — cutting through the noise, the narratives, and the manufactured fog.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mk3blog/p/the-constitution-requires-what-weve?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
02:36 PM - Jan 28, 2026
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