Desiring national unity, America's founding generation developed elaborate plans and institutions that, as today's public schools, consume billions of dollars and command the attention of some 90% of our children. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, Daniel Webster and others conceived of schooling as creating an educated, loyal citizenry capable of self government. Paradoxically, they thought to avoid the evils of anarchy and tyranny, young citizens must be molded into "republican machines" allowing them to "perform their parts properly in the great machine of the government of the state."