Friday, May 1, 2009

James Madison

Great Britain’s mixed regime, for all of its vaunted moderation, hardly seemed an appropriate model for Americans so recently liberated from its tyrannical rule. To the contrary, as Madison saw it, the Revolution had been fought to defend the then-controversial view that popular government could rise to the standard of good government. --Gary Rosen, Madison’s Madison, First Things, April 1996, review of The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, by Lance Banning


Recommended reading:
by James Madison at Reading Rat


Criticism (articles, essays, reviews):

The First Amendment was not, of course, "first" among the amendments put before the states in 1789 for ratification. It was the third of twelve, the first two of which went unratified. Tellingly, in James Madison's initial proposal, the amendments would have been inserted amid the various clauses of the body of the Constitution, reflecting and reinforcing its central logic but not altering its substance. For Madison, the First Amendment did not protect anything that was not already protected by the Constitution: the injunction for Congress to "make no law" was a reminder of the limits of governmental power. --George Thomas, First Things, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2008, review of Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, by Anthony Lewis, and Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality, by Martha Nussbaum

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