Quote of the day: On "originalism"

From Jill Lepore's "The Commandments: The Constitution and Its Worshippers," a brief history of the American public's knowledge of our founding document:

The populist appeal of originalism overlaps with that of heritage tourism: both collapse the distance between past and present and locate virtue in an imaginary eighteenth century where “the people” and “the élite” are perfectly aligned in unity of purpose.