We’re all invoking America’s past these days, no matter the political or ideological position we happen to hold. Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and others are looked back upon in the same way the ancient Greeks looked back upon, not the gods, but the Titans - the Elder Gods who ruled the universe with incredible size and strength eons before the gods came into being. Atlas, who bore the world on his shoulders, is probably the Titan of which most of us would have some recognition. And that’s what Jefferson, Madison and other Founding Fathers from America’s pristine, golden era are: They are Atlas, holding our world together and supporting it with their grand ideas.

Yet, in the fall of 2013 one has to wonder if these Atlases who helped to create the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787, ultimately got it wrong. It was Madison, Hamilton and John Jay who, in 1787-88, wrote 85 newspaper articles arguing in favor of the ratification of our Constitution. These articles are today known as the “Federalist Papers” and they are considered vitally important in interpreting and explaining the Constitution under which we are governed. Madison, Hamilton and Jay wrote under the name “Publius.”

But not everybody was onboard with the idea that a republic was a good idea. One of those who opposed the idea of a republic wrote under the pseudonym “Cato.”

Cato, probably one George Clinton by name, said the territory of the United States was too immense; the country had too many climates within that immense territory; too many different kinds of productions and commerce; too many people with too many “interest(s), morals and policies.” He called it “an intuitive truth” that “a consolidated republican form of government,” like the one the Federalist Papers were advocating, would never be able to “form a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty ...”

Cato was of the opinion that the people’s interests were so “opposite” and “dissimilar” by nature that the end result would be “like a house divided against itself.”

Wouldn’t it be something if, after 225 years, “Cato” is ultimately proven to be correct and “Publius” (the Titans: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay) wrong? Yes, we somehow survived the Civil War but, I swear, those of us alive in the fall of 2013 are perhaps on the way to turning this country upsidedown. I’m not saying we’d go from Publius to Cato overnight or even in a decade, but I will say in my lifetime I’ve never felt our house as divided as it is today.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.