To celebrate John Adams' 289th birthday, I visited the Adams Presidential Center in Quincy Mass

for an enlightening conversation on the constitutional legacy of the Adams family.

Hello, friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.

The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit, chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

In this episode of We the People, I'm joined by Danielle Allen,

professor at Harvard and Jane Kamensky,

the president and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.

Thanks to the Adams Presidential Center

for convening this discussion

and to President Kurt Graham for moderating.

Together, we explore the constitutional legacy of the Adams family, including John and Abigail

Adams and John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams.

And we discussed the importance of resurrecting the Adams family's tradition of self-mastery

and self-improvement to defend the American idea.

Enjoy the conversation.

Well, thank you all very much for being here.

I know it was a great effort, especially for you two, to come from a distance.

In getting at the relevance of John Adams, Jeff, I'd like to start with you,

and you've spent a lot of time thinking about the way American history has been defined between Hamilton and

Jefferson, kind of as two points of view.

And I'm curious, if you could first of all just kind of explain that to us in a little bit

of detail.

...