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Lädt ... A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American Statevon Max M. Edling
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What were the intentions of the Founders? Was the American constitution designed to protect individual rights? To limit the powers of government? To curb the excesses of democracy? Or to create a robust democratic nation-state? These questions echo through today's most heated legal and political debates. In this powerful new interpretation of America's origins, Max Edling argues that the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a government that could act vigorously in defense of American interests. The Constitution transferred the powers of war making and resource extraction from the states to the national government thereby creating a nation-state invested with all the important powers of Europe's eighteenth-century "fiscal-military states." A strong centralized government, however, challenged the American people's deeply ingrained distrust of unduly concentrated authority. To secure the Constitution's adoption the Federalists had to accommodate the formation of a powerful national government to the strong current of anti-statism in the American political tradition. They did so by designing a government that would be powerful in times of crisis, but which would make only limited demands on the citizenry and have a sharply restricted presence in society. The Constitution promised the American people the benefit of government without its costs. Taking advantage of a newly published letterpress edition of the constitutional debates, A Revolution in Favor of Government recovers a neglected strand of the Federalist argument, making a persuasive case for rethinking the formation of the federal American state. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)342.73Social sciences Law Constitutional and administrative law North America Constitutional law--United StatesKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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The federalists, Edling argues, saw the need to create a powerful national government which controlled the ability to set fiscal and military policy, a la the European states of the day. In America, however, the people would only accept such a state if it could function, in Edling's words, in a "light and inconspicuous" manner - that is, if the government wasn't visible in the everyday lives of the citizens, didn't make them pay too many obvious taxes, etc. The anti-federalists, while agreeing for the most part that the national government should have those functions (after living through the Confederation, who wouldn't?), disagreed on what limits should be placed on the national government's ability to make war and raise money.
Edling's research suggests that anti-federalist sentiment stems largely from the "English opposition" tradition (the roots of which are documented well in Bernard Bailyn's cornerstone work The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution). Deep suspicion of government and fear of anything that could be perceived as an encroachment on personal liberty were the hallmarks of this line of thinking, which is extended by Edling into the anti-federalist rhetoric during the debate over ratification of the Constitution and beyond. He fails to address the obvious tension for those who utilized the rhetoric during the run-up to Revolution and then pushed for the Constitution - (a good jumping-off point for future study, if anyone's if need of a dissertation idea).
I have a few issues with the arguments Edling puts forward, mainly for the questions they leave unanswered than anything else. He seems at various points but particularly in the final chapters to conflate anti-federalism with Democratic-Republicanism as it arose in the 1790s; this is really a difficult case to make, given the participation of so many one-time federalists (Madison being the preeminent one) on the Jeffersonian side of the first party debate. I worry that Edling has equated small-f federalism (the ideology) with large-F Federalism (the political party); his failure to differentiate the terms is troublesome.
As a prior reviewer (the eminent historian Lance Banning of the University of Kentucky) has written, "This is not an easy work to read. It is repetitive and graceless, decidedly monographic, and heavy handed in the stating of its case. And yet, despite a number of mistakes with scholars’ names or titles, the scholarship is deeply impressive and the argument is an important contribution. It will certainly repay the efforts of every scholar in the field." This text is a historian's history, full of references to the prior work of such-and-who, and totally lacking in narrative structure or style. It's not difficult to tell it stemmed from a doctoral thesis, and Edling does repeat himself ad nauseum (if you don't get his point after reading the book ... or even the first five pages ... you haven't been paying attention).
For its stylistic and structural flaws, the argument is interesting and different. Edling's book is a significant one, however imperfect. ( )