Book Alert / The Genius of America
The Genius of America -- How The Constitution Saved Our Country And Why It Can Again by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes, Bloomsbury '07, $23.95, 296 pages, ISBN #1596911999. Index, source notes, abbreviations and bibliography, appendix, no illustrations.
"If men were angels," observed founding father James Madison, "no government would be necessary." But they're not, say the authors of this finely-wrought new book, and so "the framers had to recognize what people were really like and then design a government around that reality." Until then, experiments in democracy had expected selfishly minded people to rise above self interest to sacrifice for a common good.
Hofstra law professor Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes, executive editor of the International Herald Tribune, observe that the framers benefitted from a first hand look at human nature in the early years of independence: "...the people had nearly let their army starve in the field of battle. They had competed, one state against another, for the upper hand in trade. They had profiteered and stolen and refused to work together."
So, they argue, the founding fathers took a gimlet-eyed approach to drafting a constitution that recognized how men were made, not how we might like them to be made. Their approach: "To impede change until enough people supported it. To force people to the middle. To encourage compromise. To spread power around so that....the few could not oppress the many, and the many could not oppress the few."
While Americans currently grow frustrated with "gridlock, partisan politics and special interests," the authors call for restoration of our "Constitutional Conscience," recognizing that "our democracy is a fragile construct that requires both an understanding of its history and a commitment to participation." In so doing, they argue the importance of "valuing political process over product." It is worthy of note that, at 220 years, America is the oldest democracy in history. We must be doing something right.
