A Constitution in Full

Description

"When political debates devolve, as they often do these days, into a contest between big-government progressivism and natural rights individualism, Americans tend to appeal to the "self-evident" truths inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But Peter Lawler and Richard Reinsch remind us that these truths understood in the abstract are untethered from a prior, unwritten constitution presupposed by the Framers--one found in culture, customs, traditions, experiences, and beliefs. A Constitution in Full is Lawler and Reinsch's attempt to return this critical context to US constitutionalism--to recover a political sense of individualism in relation to country, family, religious community, and nature. Power, the authors suggest, is a public trust, not a form of obedience to either majoritarian suppression of particular liberties or the endless rights-claims lodged by autonomous individuals against society. Instead, power is ordered to the demands of a shared political enterprise that emerges from man's social nature. Building on political insights from Alexis de Tocqueville, Orestes Brownson, John Courtney Murray, and others Lawler and Reinsch seek to restore the relational person--the individual grounded in family, work, faith, and community--to a central place in our understanding of republican constitutionalism. Their work promotes the ongoing development of constitutional self-government rooted in our historical, legal, and religious foundations. The shared middle-class values that once united almost all Americans as well as any confidence in democratic deliberation or political liberty are rapidly atrophying. This book aims to rebuild this confidence by helping us think seriously about the complex interplay between political and economic liberties and the relational life of creatures and citizens. "-- "The late Peter Augustine Lawler and Richard M. Reinsch II look to the political thought of the nineteenth-century New England intellectual and Catholic convert Orestes Brownson to understand this unwritten constitution. In contrast to the implicit atheism of classical liberalism, Brownson developed a relational political theory that balanced state authority and individual liberty within the context of social, familial, religious, and economic life. The full American constitution depends upon an unwritten constitution that avoids both abstract universalism and tribal secessionism by recognizing humans as material, political, and spiritual beings"--

Subjects

Other Editions

• A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American LibertyHardcoverUniversity Press of Kansas2019-05-13
• Constitution in FullUniversity Press of Kansas2019-01-01