Audrey Hofstadter Summary: The Founding Fathers: The Age of Realism E

Audrey Hofstadter heavyset The Founding Fathers The Age of Realism Summary of Section IThe reasoning behind the Constitution of the United States is presented as based upon the philosophy of Hobbes and the religion of Calvin. It assumes the natural state of mankind in a state of war, and that the carnal mind is at enmity with God. Through proscribed, the struggle betwixt democracy and tyranny is discussed as the Founding Fathers who envisioned the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787 believed not in total democracy, but instead motto common man as selfish and contemptuous, and therefore in select of a a good political constitution to control him. Being a largely propertied body, with the exception of William Few, who was the only one who could honestly be said to represent the majority yeoman farmer class, the highly inside(a) classes were fearful of granting man his due rights, as the belief that man was an unregenerate mount who has to be controlled reverberated.H owever, the Fathers were indeed ?intellectual heirs? of the seventeenth-century England republicanism with its opposition to arbitrary rule and organized religion in popular sovereignty. Thus, the paradoxical fears of the advance in democracy, and of a give up to the extreme right emerged. The awareness that both military dictatorship and a return to monarchy were being seriously discussed in some quarters propelled the thoroughgoing framers such as John Jay to bring to attention. IIConsistent to eighteenth-century ethos unexpended the Constitution-makers with great faith in universals. They believed in an inexorable view of a self-interested man. Feeling that all me were naturally inclined to be bad they seek a compromising system of checks and balances for government. This was bolstered by the scientific work by Newton, ?in which metaphors sprang as naturally to mens minds as did biological metaphors in the Darwinian atmosphere of the late nineteenth century.? Ther efore Madison and others thought to slosh around the possibly dangerous majority by setting up a large number and variety of local interests, so that the passel give ?be unable to concert and carry into effect their scheme of oppression.? And thus, nous powers went to the propertied. IIIConstitutional format was a series of ironical statements, as it stands in ?direct antithesis to American democratic f... ...anced. Governeur Morris understood that, ?Wealth tends to sully the mind and to nourish its love of power, and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the tactual sensation of the opulent.? Therefore as seen with the second quote, Hofstadter is emphasizing the compromise in difference a form of representative government as well as having a strong federal government in that ?its several persona parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping from each one other in their proper places.? Therefore they saw it as in their form of a small direct democracy the unstable passions of the people would dominate law making but a representative government, as Madison stated, would ?refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through with(predicate) the medium of a chosen body of citizens.? John Adams finally pointed out in Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States that the split in assembly would stop the rich from ?plundering the poor, and vice versa,? with an impartial administrator armed with the veto power. Thus, what radiates from such actions was the achievement of neutralization.BibliographyHofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition.