"According to ancient Chinese philosophy, the forces of yin and yang create the balance of the universe. They manifest as night and day, darkness and light, feminine and masculine, inner and outer, heart and head. They balance, border, and complete each other, forming together a unified whole.

Understanding this dynamic affords us a deeper awareness of the rhythms underlying all things. Yin and yang emanate from a primordial Oneness that the Chinese call the Tao, a mystical underpinning to all worldly events. This Oneness, which is the field from whence all possibilities flow, constantly choreographs a dancing universe. The dual forces of the phenomenal world make passionate moves at every turn. Where there is yin, yang finds it; where there is yang, yin awaits. This dance creates the drama of human existence, the metaphysical engine that makes the world go around.

This book is about the yin and yang of American history: the miraculous combination of vision and politics that gave rise to our beginnings, their ultimate rending at the hands of unbridled human passion, and the current yearning of the American heart to put them back together.

Our founders embodied the ideals of an extraordinary moment in time, and with the success of the American Revolution they created one of the miracles of modern history. Heirs to the European Age of Enlightenment--a movement proclaiming the inherent goodness of man--our Founders expressed their philosophical vision in the Declaration of Independence and their political genius in the U.S Constitution. Their balance of intellectual brilliance with personal courage, philosophical vision with political acumen, and mature serenity with revolutionary fervor created a doorway in a seemingly impenetrable wall of history. The Western world was stuck, and they unstuck it.

The founding of the United States was a dramatic repudiation of the ancient regime--a social structure that dominated all of Europe for centuries, placing power in the hands of monarchs and aristocracy, and relegating the masses to serfdom and servitude. A worldview so entrenched as to leave the common masses of humanity little hope of rising above the station in life into which they had been born was abolished forever by a group of young Americans who stood up to what was then the most powerful military force in the world and said "No. We have a better idea." They were young and rebellious and –like all revolutionaries--in the eyes of some, quite out of their minds. Their audacity is part of our national heritage."