The tangled webs they weave span from Pine [bad word] Ridge, way back from Shay's defeat on up to Gustafsen (now cue the [bad word] parade of ditto-heads [bad word] and pricks to drown out this faintest threat [bad word] [bad word] heretics). 
Conclusion: the nail that sticks up gets hammered down and the master's finest tools are found slack-jawed and placid amidst the cacophony of screaming billboards and Disney-fied history. 
Sometimes the ties that bind are strange: no justice shines upon the cemetery plots marked Hampton, Weaver or Anna-Mae where Federal Bureaus and Fraternal Orders have cast their shadows; permanent features built into these borders. 
But undercover of the customary gap we find between History and [bad word]  the Founding Fathers bask in the rocket's blinding red glare. 
The bombs bursting in air. 
One nation. 
Indivisible? 
The [bad word] is when the back-country learned of ratification the People had a coffin painted black and solemnly borne in funeral procession, they buried it deep in the earth as an emblem of the dissolution and internment of their Publick Liberty. 
Someday, somewhere, today's empires are tomorrow's ashes.