When they were lampooned in the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not stage a Catholic League–style tantrum but instead took out a series of wry advertisements in the playbill, inviting theater-goers to receive a copy of the Mormon scriptures. “You’ve seen the play, now read the book,” read one ad, while another advised: “Our version is sliiiightly different.”
I thought conservatives missed a similar opportunity with Hamilton, the most patriotic thing on Broadway since George M. Cohan was belting out “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Somebody should have left copies of The Federalist Papers under the theater seats or something like that. Alexander Hamilton’s patriotism was not the mawkish kind — it was the mature and wary kind: “It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” This is, I think, still true.
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