Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution

"So it was that the Framers brought a vast knowledge of history and the whole long tradition of civic humanism with them to Philadelphia in May of 1787....they introduced an entirely new concept into the discourse, that of federalism, and in the doing, created a novus ordo seclorum: a new order of the ages."-"Power, Principles, and Consequences"-Forrest McDonald

My goal in life, before I depart this world is to read every book Professor Forrest McDonald has written. If you want to really know what the founding fathers thought, wrote, or argued, here is where you go.

I think the biggest mistake the Framers made was leaving the Queen out of the picture. In Great Britain, she has the power to dissolve Parliament! 'Just a spoon full of sugar...' Dissolve Parliament!!!! What a concept! Would make quite a splash in the USA given last night's countrywide tea parties in America!

What concerns me is that having made our currency worthless by flooding the country with more paper currency, We The People, will be very vulnerable to attack and "waging the war on terror" if we have no money to supply our troops adequately for the task, or deploy them. I have bookmarked a British similar situation with regard to defense written by Donald E. Graves about how the Labour government in reducing expenditures has made it very hard for the Brits to meet their obligations in Iraq, Germany and Afghanistan and around the world. The article is entitled "Where have all the regiments gone?"

It seems to me that we are reliving the days during the revolution since our Congress is doing exactly what the Continental congress did by the printing of currency causing inflation and making it extremely difficult for soldiers to even buy horses to enable them to fight the war. It's pure idiocy, insanity, foolishness to go down this path that the Democratic majority is leading us on, sweet talking us on all the way. Let's not wait and see where this path will lead us. How many times does the record have to be played before we realize how the party works.

Given that there are extremely dangerous, murderous, regimes/networks in the world today flirting with the prospect of nuclear attacks, now is not the time to beat our sword into plowshares. This is not the messianic age-not yet. Now is the time to be strong, now is the time to be ever vigilant, now is the time to watch and take action (not necessarily military).

Yesterday, I wanted to be at the capitol in downtown Atlanta, yet I was definitely there in spirit. "So help me G-d".

Professor McDonald's book from 1985 is an erudite study of the origins of the U.S. Constitution. In a single volume, he weaves together the many intellectual ideas (e.g., common law, natural law, politics, and economics) that influenced the framers of America's national government. One of the key points he makes is that the terminology at the heart of the American experiments in government was still evolving at this point in time; while everyone wanted a "republican" form of government, different people meant different things with that word. Additionally, there were tensions between the basic principles of the founders; in particular, the desire for a republican form of government had lead to abuses of property rights by the state governments during and after the Revolution.

McDonald's book is full of useful insights and I learned a lot from it. It certainly goes a lot deeper than some other books about the Constitutional Convention that limit their scope to the actual sequence of debates and compromises that took place in 1787. (I'm thinking in particular of Carol Berkin's "A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution".) Readers who enjoy this type of intellectual history should also check out books by Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Wood.

However, McDonald may have gone overboard with details in some chapters; in particular I felt that the long section (23 pages) on property rights in Chapter 2 was excessive. While information about grazing, wood gathering, hunting, and water rights might be useful in a book about the history of America's legal system aimed at lawyers, I did not feel that any of this was relevant to the origins of the Constitution. Chapter 2 is certainly the weakest chapter of the book and probably discourages many readers from reading the rest of it. And that's a shame, because the rest of the book is better and well worth reading.

McDonald provides two appendices: a list of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention and the text of the Constitution itself (but unfortunately without the Bill of Rights). An additional appendix listing the major writers whose ideas influenced the Constitution would also have been helpful.

My daughter used the book for Goverment AP class - mandatory reading - and with no regrets. It really helps to understand the basis of the our Nation's goverment from an objective perspective. The light through which our founding fathers design the constitution is clearly depicted and fully explore with annotated references.

Forrest McDonald has written some exciting work on the Constitutional era in American history. "Novus Ordo Seclorum" lives up to earlier works.

First, what does he mean by the Latin phrase that is the book's title? One translation might be "a new order of the ages" (page 262). Of this, McDonald says that (page 262):

"So it was that the Framers brought a vast knowledge of history and the whole long tradition of civic humanism with them to Philadelphia in May of 1787, and that they departed four months later having fashioned a frame of government that necessitated a redefinition of most of the terms in which the theory and ideology of civic humanism had been discussed."

McDonald notes that for this "new order," four sets of considerations were important for the Framers as they deliberated upon a new framework for governing, as they moved from the flawed Articles of Confederation to some form that would be more effective. Among these guidelines:

1. Protecting (page 3) "the lives, liberty, and property of the citizenry."
2. A commitment to republicanism (including a role for the people, representative institutions, a distrust of direct democracy.
3. History--including ancient Greece and Rome, prior confederations, and the development of English representative institutions.
4. Political theory, including the works of David Hume, James Harrington, John Locke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, and so on.

One important feature of the debates was, as John Jay and others put it, a sense of urgency. There was a sense that of the Americans could not make republicanism work, then (page 183) "it would not be likely to be tried again anywhere else." There was a sense that the time was special and that the United States could be a model.

This is a very nice work addressing the origins of the Constitution, what was at stake, what went into the debates and the structure of the Constitution.

No page turner, it is still a good look at the founding era....