Acknowledging the progressive content of the bourgeois democratic revolution against the British Empire in the eighteenth century is particularly commendable. A lot of people seem to me to want to cover up for today's bourgeois democracy by condemning the past, implicitly pretending that "we" are morally improved and know better and now the Constitution and the status quo can be reformed once we confess our past sins. Or something like that, though perhaps I am being unfair? By the way, as I understand it, women and Blacks who had sufficient property could and did vote, until the spread of manhood suffrage limited the privilege to white men (with a good deal of flexibility as to immigrants, depending on location and period.)
I would quibble that distinguishing phases of the anti-colonial revolution is useful. The people who fought the revolution I personally call the Founders and the people who wrote the Constitution I call the Framers. To my eye, the Philadelphia convention bears a similar relationship to the American Revolution as the Directory does to the Great French Revolution, a sharp right-ward turn. The luck of geography and lower population and frontier land permitted a longer run to the first Constitution than fell to the lot of the Directory, overthrown by Napoleon I. The Second American Revolution, called usually the Civil War, rewrote the Constitution via amendment (the Supreme Court has fought a rear guard fight against the Civil War amendments for decades!) But the Framers' work failed too, even if it took longer than the Directory. It had its first constitutional crisis in 1800. But as early as 1820 polarization over the ramshackle cobbled up framework began to fall apart, ending inevitably in war.
The founders included people like Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and the Crisis and Agrarian Justice. It is no accident Paine was read out of history in favor of John Adams. Benjamin Franklin's role in the replacement of Pennsylvania's government by a unicameral legislature is also erased. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who were revolutionary activists so to speak, did not take a major role in the deliberations in Philadelphia, despite their importance in the meeting of the convention. I don't think this was an accident. [By the way, the Christian Parenti book on the Radical Hamilton is useful to read as a corrective.]
It also seems useful to remember that the second anti-colonial revolution against the British Empire, what we call the War of 1812, was followed by a wave of democratization in the form of manhood suffrage and in the North, completion of the revolutionary movement towards abolition of slavery. What's called the Age of Jackson, a populist "revolution" far more genuine that the Jeffersonian "revolution" of 1800. True Jeffersonianism I think was exemplified by the Tertium Quids or Old Republicans led by John Randolph. Sometimes I wonder if Jefferson's work on the Declaration of Independence wasn't largely cynical rhetoric on his part, seeing not only as not the reality but not even an honest promise or sincere hope.
Dr. West I don't want to abuse, but religion is usually a bad guide to politics and I tend to regard them as largely meteors, even those who don't repent of their radical entanglements like Rev. A.J. Muste.
The issue of class immunity for the rich and powerful being reduced to lawfare may need some discussion?
Very thought provoking article, well done.
Acknowledging the progressive content of the bourgeois democratic revolution against the British Empire in the eighteenth century is particularly commendable. A lot of people seem to me to want to cover up for today's bourgeois democracy by condemning the past, implicitly pretending that "we" are morally improved and know better and now the Constitution and the status quo can be reformed once we confess our past sins. Or something like that, though perhaps I am being unfair? By the way, as I understand it, women and Blacks who had sufficient property could and did vote, until the spread of manhood suffrage limited the privilege to white men (with a good deal of flexibility as to immigrants, depending on location and period.)
I would quibble that distinguishing phases of the anti-colonial revolution is useful. The people who fought the revolution I personally call the Founders and the people who wrote the Constitution I call the Framers. To my eye, the Philadelphia convention bears a similar relationship to the American Revolution as the Directory does to the Great French Revolution, a sharp right-ward turn. The luck of geography and lower population and frontier land permitted a longer run to the first Constitution than fell to the lot of the Directory, overthrown by Napoleon I. The Second American Revolution, called usually the Civil War, rewrote the Constitution via amendment (the Supreme Court has fought a rear guard fight against the Civil War amendments for decades!) But the Framers' work failed too, even if it took longer than the Directory. It had its first constitutional crisis in 1800. But as early as 1820 polarization over the ramshackle cobbled up framework began to fall apart, ending inevitably in war.
The founders included people like Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and the Crisis and Agrarian Justice. It is no accident Paine was read out of history in favor of John Adams. Benjamin Franklin's role in the replacement of Pennsylvania's government by a unicameral legislature is also erased. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, who were revolutionary activists so to speak, did not take a major role in the deliberations in Philadelphia, despite their importance in the meeting of the convention. I don't think this was an accident. [By the way, the Christian Parenti book on the Radical Hamilton is useful to read as a corrective.]
It also seems useful to remember that the second anti-colonial revolution against the British Empire, what we call the War of 1812, was followed by a wave of democratization in the form of manhood suffrage and in the North, completion of the revolutionary movement towards abolition of slavery. What's called the Age of Jackson, a populist "revolution" far more genuine that the Jeffersonian "revolution" of 1800. True Jeffersonianism I think was exemplified by the Tertium Quids or Old Republicans led by John Randolph. Sometimes I wonder if Jefferson's work on the Declaration of Independence wasn't largely cynical rhetoric on his part, seeing not only as not the reality but not even an honest promise or sincere hope.
Dr. West I don't want to abuse, but religion is usually a bad guide to politics and I tend to regard them as largely meteors, even those who don't repent of their radical entanglements like Rev. A.J. Muste.
The issue of class immunity for the rich and powerful being reduced to lawfare may need some discussion?