But even if there were such a formula, we may very easily fail to perceive it. Suppose one manages even that. It means nothing unless you can convince a room full of fellow statesmen (who bring their own ideas and local interests with them) that you’re right. Still one thing more: you’ll have to reduce your idea to words left on a page for posterity–words, as Madison notes, that themselves can be sources of obscurity and ambiguity. Put it all together and it is hardly surprising that Madison supposed that only the help of God’s “Almighty hand” could explain the unity and wisdom actually achieved by the Constitutional Convention.

Progressives enter the political arena with much less fear and trembling. In the spirit of FDR, they think that “trying something,” so long as it can make its way through their postmodern egalitarian filter, is always just, no matter its consequences. And if the facts don’t fit, we should still submit, since a Progressive intention, not a predictable positive consequence, is the measure of political rectitude.

What else explains perhaps last week’s most striking example of Progressive moral preening? During oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case, Justice Elena Kagan suggested that $26 million in fines and a “good luck on healthcare.gov” email to its 13,000 employees was a small price to exact from the Christian corporation for opposing its claims of conscience to Progressive “reproductive freedom” orthodoxy. Be grateful for the mercy of the Administration’s almighty hand in allowing any departure from imperial Obamacare policy–and pray that we don’t homogenize you any further.