Books like Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America

The first thing that struck me about this book was the unnecessarily defensive title. This nation's founders - that remarkable generation who were born into a wilderness backwater and not only defeated the British Empire but had the prescience and wisdom to craft a Constitution and government that would become a model the world over and avoid the trap of becoming a poorly governed "banana republic" as has happened to so many other new countries since then - need no vindication. Rather, it is for us to try to live up to their lofty standards.The author takes on the political left on their own ground - where they endlessly assert the founders were racist, sexist, biased against the poor, and so forth - and easily refutes these canards. Where the author falls short, I think, is that he does not pay sufficient attention to the basic fact that the founder literally were creating a new world. Up to that point in history, self-government was rare the world over, slavery was virtually universal, and the notion that all citizens possessed equal rights under the law was new and exotic. This being so, the founding generation is not to be condemned because the society they sought to create did not spring forth fully formed, like Athena emerging from the head of Zeus. Rather, it is a miracle they were able to achieve so much within the span of a single lifetime. Not only have subsequent generations failed to continue making the same progress, but the contemporary left, despite its incessant criticism of the founding generation, has actually sought to march in the wrong direction on many issues, and managed to pull the country as a whole along with it.All in all, this book is a worthwhile read, but does not appear destined to become one of the classics on the subject.