Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding. - book reviews

National Review, July 8, 1988 by George Carey

Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding, edited by Charles R. Kesler (Free Press, 300 pp., $29.95)

STRAUSSIANS TO THE RESCUE George Carey

IN THE 1950s, students of the late Professor Leo Strauss began to turn their attention to discovering and elucidating the principles undergirding the American political order. Saving the Revolution is the most recent of the works proceeding from this deveolopment. It comprises 14 essays -- most of them written by second-and third-generation "Straussians" -- which, in the main, focus on the central teachings of The Federalist.

Virtually all Straussians regard the Declaration of Independence as the central component of the American political tradition. Moreover, they hold, the essential values and principles embodied in the Declaration provide the standards against which subsequent institutions, policies, and leaders should be "measured." Where Straussians differ is over the character of the American regime: whether its primary end, consonant with "modern" political philosophy, is to provide for the peaceful accommodation of competing selfish and partial interests; or whether, more in keeping with classical theory, it seeks to advance more elevated moral ends.

There can be no question on which side of the great divide this book falls. Kesler argues in his introduction that the Constitution was designed to replace a weak and faltering government so that the transcendent ideals of the Declaration might be secured. Hence his book's title: Saving the Revolution. In this process, The Federalist is seen as playing an indispensable role in showing us that "the Constitution requires constitutionalism." Beyond this, on Kesler's showing, Publius (the pseudonym used by The Federalisths authors -- Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) did such a masterly job of explaining and definding the Constitution and redering its provisions a "harmonious whole" that even today we continue to see it through Publius's eyes.

The majority of the essays in this volume deal with Publius's treatment of the major principles and institutions of our constitutional fabric. For his part, Kesler offers a new way of understanding Federalist #10, the most frequently cited of all the essays, in which Publius points out the virtues of an extended republic in providing a republican remedy for the problem of rule by unjust or oppressive majorities. The contributions of Murray Dry and David Broyles deal with the arguments of the Antifederalists against the proposed Constitution and the perennial controversies surrounding state-national relationships. The separation of powers and its relationship to the character and operations of republicanism as well as the rule of law are explored in essays by William Kristol, William B. Allen, and Thomas West. Harvey Mansfield Jr. shows how Publius's republicanized executive can exercise prerogative-like powers necessary for energetic government within the confines of the Constitution. James Stoner points up the relationship between our common-law tradition, the doctrine of judicial review, and our concept of constitutionalism. And Ralph Rossum examines Publius's proposition that the Consitutiton is, in every meaningful sense, a bill of rights.

Other essays fascinating in their own right, deal with matters less directly related to Publius's teachings on constitutionalism. To mention a few, Dennis Mahoney traces how the teachings and principles of The Federalist were displaced by the new political science that marked the Progressive era. Jack Rakove focuses on the way in which The Federalist was used in the early Congresses, as well as by Northern and Southern commentators prior to the Civil War, to resolve disputes over constitutional interpretation. And Edward Banfield emphasizes that deliberation and reason alone cannot account for the adoption of the Constitution and its subsequent success; that, indeed, accident and force have both played a decisive role.

Suffice it to say that these essays are of uniform excellence, and that the volume as a whole is "must" reading for anyone, scholar or layman, interested in understanding our constitutional foundations.

The work is also significant because it raises, albeit indirectly, a basic concern about how best to approach the American political tradition. It is evident that the contributors, in discussing The Federalist and the nature of our founding, have abandoned, or at least significant modified, the "ancient/modern" distinction so prominent in Professor Strauss's approach. But the extent to which the American founding is not a "modern" undertaking brings into serious question the adequacy of the Declaration to serve as the source for understanding or evaluating Publius's enterprise. Put otherwise, we clearly overburden the Declaration if we see it as encapsulating the goals, values, and principles of the tradition that informed Publius and our founders. At best it is an incomplete guide whose value for constitution-makers is questionable: its principles represent only a portion of those found in the broader tradition, which must be rendered compatible with one another.