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I have no idea if this quotation is authentic, but I welcome a debate over Sam Adams, one of the few who is claimed by both the left and the right in American politics. He was, for the left, a fierce equalitarian and the fiery orator who kept the revolutionary embers stirred. But, for the right, he was also fiercely individualistic suspicious of even the first 3 words of the Constitution, "We the people." He wrote a friend who asked his opinion of the document, "I stumble at the threshold." In the past the King had claimed to be the embodiment of the collective people. An anti-federalist, he wanted no such collective identity in the U.S. Adams was not only the original leader of the original Tea Party, he was also a faithful Christian, having been converted as a young man in the revivals of the first Great Awakening when he first determined that New England's Israel should break away from the English Pharoah and become what he called "a Christian Sparta." There is something of him for everyone, which is why his statue stands today between Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market in Boston. We ought to share him, not fight over him. Dave Williams GMU --
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