Adams

There's something wonderful - albeit aspirational - about John Adams insisting that the government of Massachusetts be constituted as and named a commonwealth.  This is what the government was to be: neither a libertarian gossamer thread confederation, nor yet a ideologically tinged republic.  And especially not a state: that heavy word.  Of all these words, of all these ideas, commonwealth suggests an organic and inseparable expression of us: the river of the people's intent and action.