As I thumbed through the trove of Jeffrey Epstein emails released by Congress last week, I thought often of John Adams. The nation’s second president was not without his flaws, but they were typically outshone by his perceptive understanding of what republics like the early American state need if they are to endure. Adams and his associates knew that these republics rarely endured. Sometimes they were simply conquered, as any nation might be, but more often than not they collapsed from within—