Volume 35, Number 2 · February 18, 1988
The Fundamentalists and the Constitution
By Gordon S. Wood
WORKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
The American Founding: Politics, Statesmanship, and the Constitution
edited by Ralph A. Rossum, edited by Gary L. McDowell
Kennikat Press, 190 pp., $26.50
The Complete Anti-Federalist
edited by Herbert J. Storing
University of Chicago Press, 7 volumes, 1840 pp., $175.00
"The Constitutional Order, 1787–1987"
edited by Irving Kristol, edited by Nathan Glazer
The Public Interest, No. 86, $4.50
Constitutionalism and Rights
edited by Gary C. Bryner, edited by Noel B. Reynolds
Brigham Young University Press, 163 pp., $12.95 (paper)
The Founders' Constitution
edited by Philip B. Kurland, edited by Ralph Lerner
University of Chicago Press, 5 volumes, 3520 pp., $300.00
The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution
edited by Leonard W. Levy, edited by Dennis J. Mahoney
Macmillan, 395 pp., $24.95
The Moral Foundations of the American Republic
edited by Robert H. Horwitz
University Press of Virginia, 347 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Saving the Revolution: "The Federalist Papers" and The American Founding
edited by Charles R. Kesler
The Free Press, 334 pp., $29.95
Taking the Constitution Seriously
by Walter Berns
Simon and Schuster, 287 pp., $19.95
The Thinking Revolutionary: Principle and Practice in the New Republic
by Ralph Lerner
Cornell University Press, 238 pp., $24.95
No other modern state has what is called a 'founding' in quite the way the United States has. We Americans attribute to the revolutionary generation and to the creation of the Constitution a sacred, quasi-religious character. The Founding Fathers come to resemble Moses and Aeneas more than they do statesmen (which is why 'debunking' and 'humanizing' them has remained such a cottage industry). We believe that there is something unique about this 'Founding' generation of political leaders, that they were giants, or demigods, or what Henry Steele Commager has called 'a galaxy of public leaders we have never been able remotely to duplicate since.' We look back at them with awe, with the feeling that they are irretrievably lost to us. Many Americans believe that there at the 'Founding' some permanent truths about politics were established, and that we depart from them at our peril.
Review, 9138 words
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