States begin as stories. Before there are buildings, flags, or budgets, there is a shared narrative about who we hope to be, what we should expect from one another, and which rules merit our consent. The American story was spoken into being before it was built with Thomas Paine instilling “we have it in our power to begin the world over again,” a sonnet at the harbor promising a fresh start to the tired and poor, a public debate informing citizens factions would always arise and to control their effects and to bind power with words where ambition checks ambition. America’s pattern of inception is repeatable: people tell a story, that story hardens with consent into a written charter, constitution, and only then do the visible structures coalesce into institutions, law, and civic culture.

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