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The Framers: Not Philosophes, but Aristocrats |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / THE ARISTOCRATIC HERITAGE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY |
| Author: Russell Kirk |
| Publication: The world & I online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1988 |
| Size: 4,368 Words, 27,049 Characters |
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Now and again one encounters allusions to "the philosophy of the framers of the Constitution." Indeed there were lovers of wisdom among the framers; yet the fifty-five gentlemen politicians who gathered at Philadelphia two centuries ago were anything but abstract metaphysicians.
Three years after the Constitutional Convention had concluded its deliberations, Edmund Burke wrote that nothing was more consummately wicked than the heart of an abstract metaphysician who should attempt to govern nations by speculative political dogmas. He had in mind the French philosophes who had encouraged the French Revolution. But the delegates to Philadelphia had been a different lot altogether.
It will not do to attribute to the framers some peculiar "philosophy." With merely three or four exce...
. . .
...an a fire. … I am willing to lend my aid to any very small and moderate reforms, which I can be made to believe that this our ancient government requires. But, far better would it be that they were never made, and that our constitution remained unchangeable like that of Lycurgus, than that we should break in upon the main pillars of the edifice."
Amen to that, in these bicentennial years.
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