New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution - Hardcover

To hear many modern politicians tell it, the federal government is the worst thing that ever happened to the American people. Federal laws and mandates are portrayed as tyrannical, new amendments to the Constitution are proposed with frightening regularity, and "states' rights" has become the latest rallying cry for "patriots" everywhere. In response to this discontent, the 20th Century Fund commissioned New Federalist Papers, a collection of essays in defense of the Constitution. The three authors, Alan Brinkley, Kathleen M. Sullivan, and Nelson W. Polsby, are all academics--Brinkley teaches history at Columbia, Sullivan is a law professor at Stanford, and Polsby teaches political science at Berkeley--and each approaches the Consititution from his or her particular field of study. Brinkley examines the history of the federal government, which was formed precisely to guard against the tyranny smaller entities such as the states could impose, then points out how far the American people have strayed from the assumptions underlying the Constitution: a well-informed, civic-minded public that takes seriously its responsibility to vote. Polsby points out how well they've managed to govern such a large and disparate territory, while Sullivan explores current attempts to impose new policies through Constitutional amendment, using the miserable failure of the Prohibition amendment as a cautionary tale.

In an era when the majority of Americans receive their news in sound bites and the solution to every problem is a facile cry to dismantle the government, New Federalist Papers is a refreshing return to the principles on which the country was founded, most of which have been misinterpreted, misconstrued, or just plain misunderstood somewhere along the way; after all, citizens should understand what they've got before they decide to throw it away.