MOO, posts #13 and #14 exemplify the type of selective reading of America's past that is helping to enable the GOP's increasing political ineffectiveness and to sweep it into the dustbin of historical irrelevance.
First, a consideration of the entire Constitution of the United States within its historical context provides numerous opportunities to realize that the founders understood that the new nation would have its growing pains as different institutions and individuals at the federal and state level tested the limits of power and boundaries of authority when it came to the actual governance of the young republic. (Question: If the founders weren't aware that people would push the boundaries, then why did they provide for checks and balances, attempt to protect the federal government from the will of the people, and install mechanisms for changing the constitution?
Oh, that's right. The Constitution meant exactly the same thing to everyone who read or heard about it, and all those who voted for its ratification did so for exactly the same reason, just as all those who opposed ratification conformed to the single shared meaning as soon as Rhode Island said "We're in!")
Second, Breen's account, although aimed at a general audience
(sell, sell, sell!), is clearly meant to advance an ongoing historiographical debate over the nature/causes/point of no return of the American Revolution that has been going on for generations among specialists of that period. (The reference to "pamphlets" is directed at Bernard Bailyn's
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution [1967; enlarged edition, 1992].) While it is always nice to think that a book one is reading breathes fresh air into a vibrant chapter of America's past, a "bottom up" approach to that time period that de-emphasizes New England is not exactly new nor "typical."
