March 23, 2003
TAKE A BREAK FROM THE WAR:
BOOKNOTES: To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders by Bernard Bailyn (C-SPAN, March 23, 2003, 8 & 11 pm)With these character sketches of key figures of the American Revolution and illuminating probes of its circumstances, Bernard Bailyn reveals the ambiguities, complexities, and uncertainties of the founding generation as well as their achievements.Using visual documentation portraits, architecture, allegorical engravings as well as written sources, Bailyn, one of our most esteemed historians, paints a complex picture of that distant but still remarkably relevant world. He explores the powerfully creative effects of the Founders’ provincialism and lays out in fine detail the mingling of gleaming utopianism and tough political pragmatism in Thomas Jefferson’s public career, and the effect that ambiguity had on his politics, political thought, and present reputation. And Benjamin Franklin emerges as a figure as cunning in his management of foreign affairs and of his visual image as he was amiable, relaxed, and amusing in his social life.
Bailyn shows, too, why it is that the Federalist papers polemical documents thrown together frantically, helter-skelter, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in a fierce political battle two hundred years ago have attained canonical status, not only as a penetrating analysis of the American Constitution but as a timeless commentary on the nature of politics and constitutionalism.
Professor Bailyn concludes, in a wider perspective, with an effort to locate the effect of the Founders’ imaginative thought on political reformers throughout the Atlantic world. Precisely how their principles were received abroad, Bailyn writes, is as ambiguous as the personalities of the remarkably creative pro- vincials who founded the American nation
MORE:
BOOK SITE: To Begin the World Anew (Borzoi Reader)
-REVIEW & LINKS: The Peopling of North America by Bernard Bailyn (Brothers Judd)
Bailyn's life of Hutchinson was one of the 2 books that
most influenced by thinking about the American
polity. The other slips my mind (senior moment,
and besides I read it over 30 years ago) but
was about the experience writing constitutions
that the Founders had had in their home colonies
before they became Founders.
An excellent argument for Orrin's position that
institutions are important/crucial to develop
what I, at least, like to think of as self-government,
though I'm not sure this is the kind of institution
Orrin was thinking about.
I think Jefferson himself regarded the state constitution of Virginia as the finest thing he'd ever written.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at March 23, 2003 9:47 PMAli:
It's actually the Statute on Religious Freedom that's one of the three achievements he had enscribed on his tombstone:
"Here was buried Thomas Jefferson; Author of the Declaration of American Independence; Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom; And Father of the University of Virginia."
Harry:
It would seem pertinent that the Founders didn't believe in self-government.
Sure, they did. Their method was subtle, but
it did not involve kings, aristocrats, priests or
swamis. It involved just folks.
Harry - Our terminology misleads. It would be better to speak of cooperative governance. The founders, through schemes of checks and balances, force elected officials to cooperate with one another if government is to do anything. This, in effect, forces the American people to stay on one another's good side if they want to benefit from government. Our structure would be a recipe for paralysis and conflict if people lost "the spirit of moderation" and cooperation, which the Democrats do seem to be losing. Fortunately, freedom and the practice of building private associations helps train people in cooperation. Democratic voters tend to be those who have little experience in private, cooperative institutions.
Posted by: Paul Jaminet at March 24, 2003 6:54 AMHarry:
One would note that the folks allowed a say in governance was very limited and the powers they were granted fairly limited. They believed in representation, not self-governance.
Actually, the powers granted were unlimited
at first, and it was an afterthought to impose
a Bill of Rights.
The logic of the document was not realized
at once -- it has not been fully realized even
yet -- but we govern ourselves, we do not
refer back to the Mother of Parliaments.
I remind you that after arrogating a number
of powers to itself, the Constitution reserved
"all powers" to the states.
Hamilton actually argued against the Bill of Rights as redundant, because it barred Congress from acting on issues that the Constitution had granted it no right to meddle in to begin with. He said spelling out precise rights that were set aside would tend over time to the assumption the Congress had power over all the others. He was, of course, prescient.
Posted by: oj at March 24, 2003 5:07 PM