America as a modern state -- The case against the Constitution -- The case against the Constitution, reconsidered -- Reform in the constitutional grain -- Thinking constitutionally.
Summary:
"Keeping the Republic is a defense of the American constitutional order, and a response to its critics, including those who are estranged from the very idea of a fixed constitution in which "the living are governed by the dead." Dennis Hale and Marc Landy takes seriously the criticisms of the United States Constitution. Before mounting their argument, they present an intellectual history of the key critics, including Thomas Paine, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, Robert Dahl, and Sanford Levinson. Hale and Landy frame their defense of the Constitution by understanding America in terms of modernity, in which small republics are no longer possible and there is a need to protect the citizens of a massive modern state while still preserving liberty. The Constitution makes large, popular government possible by placing effective limits on the exercise of power. The Constitution forces the people to be governed by the dead, both to pay the debt we owe to those who came before us and to preserve society for generations yet unborn. Keeping the Republic is both a survey of American anti-constitutionalism and a powerful argument for maintaining the constitutional order of the nation's Framers"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.