The lovers' quarrel : the two foundings and American political development / Elvin T. Lim.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The United States has had not one, but two Foundings. The Constitution produced by the Second Founding came to be only after a vociferous battle between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Federalists favored a relatively powerful central government, while the Anti-Federalists distrusted the concentration of power in one place and advocated the preservation of sovereignty in the states as crucibles of post-revolutionary republicanism -- the legacy of the First Founding. This philosophical cleavage has been at the heart of practically every major political conflict in U.S. history, and lives on today in debates between modern liberals and conservatives. In The Lovers' Quarrel, Elvin T. Lim presents a systematic and innovative analysis of this perennial struggle. The framers of the second Constitution, the Federalists, were not operating in an ideational or institutional vacuum; rather, the document they drafted and ratified was designed to remedy the perceived flaws of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. To decouple the Two Foundings is to appreciate that there is no such thing as "original meaning," only original dissent. Because the Anti-Federalists insisted that prior and democratically sanctioned understandings of federalism and union had to be negotiated and partially grafted onto the new Constitution, the Constitution's Articles and the Bill of Rights do not cohere as well together as has conventionally been thought. Rather, they represent two antithetical orientations toward power, liberty, and republicanism. The altercation over the necessity of the Second Founding generated coherent and self-contained philosophies that would become the core of American political thought, reproduced and transmitted across two centuries, whether the victors were the neo-Federalists (such as during the Civil War and the New Deal) or the neo-Anti-Federalists (such as during the Jacksonian era and the Reagan Revolution).The Second Founding -- the sole "founding" that we generally speak of -- would become a template for the unique, prototypically American species of politics and political debate. Because of it, American political development occurs only after the political entrepreneurs of each generation lock horns in a Lovers' Quarrel about the principles of one of the Two Foundings, and succeed in justifying and forging a durable expansion or contraction of federal authority.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In this engaging and innovative approach to American political development and thought, Lim (Wesleyan Univ.) affirms the "inner logic" of American politics. Accordingly, the greatest disputes occur over the nature of the union. The book is an explication of the two "loves," the interconnected tension and viability of the two foundings of the American republic: 1776 and 1787-89. The ensuing political tensions are closely associated with the two loves and whether the constitution is a restrictive or empowering document. The two sources of tension are critiqued in the course of a historical survey that includes the generation after the founders, Jefferson, Jackson, Calhoun, the sectional crisis, the Progressives, the New Deal, and the "New Federalism." In depicting Washington as a proponent of an energetic presidency and Thomas Jefferson as the original anti-federalist, the book's theme is imaginatively affirmed, yet the author's suggestion that anti-federalists were "presidentialists" is misleading. The connection of Jefferson and Jackson is more convincing and advances existing knowledge, but the attempt to diminish the theoretical symmetry between Madison and Calhoun is problematic. The fifth chapter unconvincingly links the anti-federalists to the Progressives, although subsequent chapters and the overall volume constitute an exemplary contribution to the scholarship of the American regime. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. --H. Lee Cheek, East Georgia State College