What Would the Founders Do?
Our Questions, Their Answers
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Descripción editorial
What would George Washington do about weapons of mass destruction? How would Benjamin Franklin feel about unwed mothers? What would Alexander Hamilton think about minorities in the military? Examining a host of issues from terrorism to women's rights, acclaimed historian Richard Brookhiser reveals why we still turn to the Founders in moments of struggle, farce, or disaster. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams and all the rest have an unshakable hold on our collective imagination. We trust them more than today's politicians because they built our country, they wrote our user's manuals-the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution-and they ran the nation while it was still under warranty and could be returned to the manufacturer. If anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, it must be the Founders. Brookhiser uses his vast knowledge to apply their views to today's issues. He also explores why what the Founders would think still matters. Written with Brookhiser's trademark eloquence and wit, while drawing on his deep understanding of American history, What Would the Founders Do? sheds new light on the disagreements and debates that have shaped our country from the beginning. Now, more than ever, we need the Founders-inspiring, argumentative, amusing know-it-alls-to help us work through the issues that divide us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reviewed by Michael LindIt might be thought that nothing new could be said about America's founding fathers, in the midst of the contemporary avalanche of tomes about Washington, Jefferson and other early American leaders. But Rick Brookhiser, inspired perhaps by a Christian motto "What Would Jesus Do?" (WWJD) has come up with a way to describe the views of the architects of the American republic that is as entertaining as it is informative."Americans have been asking what the founders would do since the founders died," writes Brookhiser, a journalist and historian (Alexander Hamilton and The Way of the WASP). Combining the skills of a first-rate writer with those of a medium at a s ance, Brookhiser channels the spirits of eminent early Americans in discussing contemporary public debates. At times, Brookhiser has to stretch to find an analogy between the era of the founders and today, such as his comparison between stem cell research and the old practice of robbing graves for medical research.In other cases, however, the conceit works to shed light on present and past alike. Should the U.S. attempt to spread democracy around the world? Brookhiser makes a case for the caution of Alexander Hamilton rather than the optimism of Thomas Jefferson. The war on drugs? "The founders would not have fought a war on drugs," but would have taxed them instead, Brookhiser declares, reasoning from the excise tax on whiskey imposed by the federal government. What would the founders do about Social Security? "Social Security follows none of their models (family provision, charity, reward for service, investment)." The book reveals that many of the public policy questions confronting the early American republic are similar to challenges Americans wrestle with today. The values of 18th-century Americans, by contrast, were radically different and benighted by modern standards. Jefferson, while opposing slavery, argued that blacks were inferior and should be expatriated from the United States. The founders took a male-dominated society for granted, though Hamilton was willing to consider sweatshop work for women: "It is worthy of particular remark, that, in general, women and children are rendered more useful... by manufacturing establishments than they would otherwise be."With a rare union of wit and scholarship, What Would the Founders Do? presents history as a source of continuing debates, rather than as a set of answers. Comparing the founders to present-day Americans, Brookhiser concludes: "We can be as intelligent as they were, and as serious, as practical, and as brave.... We can; as they said, all men are created equal."Michael Lind, the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America's Greatest President.
