Our compact is not just with those who are alive today. It’s also with those who have come before us and those yet to be born. To the founding fathers, the Constitution and our system of government established a moral bond connecting generations. “There seems…to be some foundation in the nature of things, in the relation which one generation bears to another, for the descent of obligations from one to another,” wrote James Madison. “Equity may require it. Mutual good may be promoted by it. And all that seems indispensable in stating the account between the dead and the living is to see that
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