Everyone Is Right

In the sweltering summer of 1787, 55 delegates locked themselves in a Philadelphia room for 116 days with windows nailed shut, no press allowed, and a singular mission: save a failing nation or watch it collapse into chaos. What emerged was perhaps the most revolutionary political document in human history—the U.S. Constitution. But here's what makes this story remarkable: these founders weren't idealistic dreamers banking on human virtue. They were pragmatic architects who assumed people would always act selfishly, and they designed a system to harness that selfishness for the common good. This episode reveals the hidden genius behind America's constitutional framework: a concept called "enlightened self-interest" that turned inevitable human greed and power struggles into a developmental elevator for society. Unlike the French Revolution, which violently destroyed existing structures and descended into chaos, the American experiment created institutional guardrails that channeled competing ambitions toward