“Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principal of our government? Is honor?

“Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?”—John Adams in a letter to a friend (1810)

Maybe we should have paid more attention. Or perhaps this too shall pass.