David Wineberg's Reviews > American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

The Then and Now of the USA

American Dialogue is the pathetically ill-chosen title for an important and well-presented book. Joseph Ellis has pulled together a career’s worth of examining (and teaching) history. Using several of the US founding fathers as examples, he shows what they really faced, how they really dealt with everything, and where they led us – astray or otherwise. Every other chapter concerns how we deal with those same issues today. The comparison is not especially favorable to either era, but putting things in perspective is of immense value. Our assumptions today do not match the reality of then, even if we say they do. Yet we deal today with not only some of the same issues, but a lot of the fallout from the founders’ errors, compromises, and failures.

American Dialogue quotes the founders in their various government positions, complaining then about exactly the same things we complain about today: that foreign policy seems to be pure caprice, that Congress is no body to make hard decisions, that the clear path is never chosen, that getting agreement to move forward on essentially anything is nearly impossible (and this before the party system took hold).

Thomas Jefferson was a wild card. He committed and withdrew. He supported and betrayed. He wanted to free the slaves, but only if they could immediately be deported so as not to dilute the blood (eg. throughout his own family). He fabricated stories about George Washington being a British spy (fake news!). But he also insisted the constitution was a live, fungible document: “We might as well require a man to still wear the coat which fitted him as a boy, as civilized society to remain under the regime of their barbarous ancestors.”

John Adams tried to keep the politics out of politics and keep America on the high road. His battles included equality, which is not a natural state, and which requires government programs and laws to maintain. He recognized that aristocracy/inequality would be a threat to the country. Ellis says Adams, along with John Jay, are the most underrated and least studied/famous of the founders.

James Madison was the architect of the Constitution. He manipulated George Washington out of retirement to help him implement a workable system, and save the country. He worked the crowd of delegates, built consensus, and got a lot of what he wanted. What was dropped would have solved many of the problems the USA faces today.

As president, George Washington focused on avoiding a calamity with Native Americans. He negotiated a genuine, honorable and fair treaty with the Creek, which was immediately (and literally) trampled by the public moving into its sovereign territory. Having no standing army, and needing a good 5000 troops to keep the interlopers out, Washington failed and was humiliated. His successors did not pick up the torch.

The Second Amendment raises its ugly head too, as Ellis shows where it came from and how it was distorted before it was finally passed, backward and incomplete (it’s not even a sentence as passed, thanks to Congress). It was originally meant to mandate public service in a militia. Today of course, it means everyone should have unlimited semi-automatic assault weapons.

There is a lot of nonsense about originalism that Ellis dispels. Antonin Scalia’s triumphant Keller opinion claims to represent the thinking of the founders and the American people of the era, but it really relies on current trends and misrepresents the founders. Not to mention 200 years of case law. The exact opposite of what Scalia claimed originalism stands for, and in defiance of what Jefferson and Madison declared.

Ellis says the USA is a contradiction - an empire that is a republic. The two cannot occupy the same body – but they do. The USA has acquired territories throughout its existence. At first, the West was foreign, handled by the State Department. Later, various islands were conquered. And now it has well over 800 offshore military bases, and five generals responsible for the entire world, sectioned into five theaters of operation. This republic is an empire, subject to all the weaknesses of every empire that preceded it.

America has never done the good guy thing very well. It has never understood how to win the peace. Right after the war of independence, all the states went their own ways, leaving the United States a hollow shell. They even reneged on pensions for its soldiers. The USA was headed for disintegration and anarchy. The constitution was a “roof with no sides”. It took the acquisition of the rest of the continent to get the original states interested in it being one country. Today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have clearly failed to implement postwar anything. They have cost five trillion dollars, which Ellis says, would have solidified Medicare, Social Security and all the infrastructure needs of the country. This is precisely how empires self-destruct.

There are seemingly hundreds of lessons we have not learned in American Dialogue. It gives the nation badly needed perspective, and a smattering of truth.

David Wineberg