that the founding -- well, washington is primus inter parros, as i said. the founding is a collective achievement. and while we're familiar with the doctrine of checks and balances as a way of describing the constitution, there is an inherent check and balance in the collective leadership of the founding. they argue with each other throughout the 1780s and 90s and into the 19th century, and we'll see jefferson and adams arguing this the correspondence at the end of the talk. history is an argument without end, and they have created a republic in which the constitution is not supposed to provide answers, it's supposed to provide a framework in which we argue productively. anyway, diversity in the original sense of ideological and political differences. now, let me ask -- this is a question, another question i hope you can think about. i call it the wilkes-barre question. why? because the population of wilkes-barre, pennsylvania is approximately the size of the white population of virginia in 1776. got that? now, if you and i go walking down the streets of w