The Lovers'Quarrel

The Two Foundings and American Political Development

Elvin Lim

Connects the perennially popular Founding period with many of today's most pressing and relevant political topics
The first time anyone has challenged the use of 'the Founding,' the 'founders,' and called attention to the idea that there were two Foundings
Resurrects Anti-Federalism and tie it to modern conservatism and the Tea Party, by way of Jefferson, Jackson, and the Confederacy

The Lovers'Quarrel

The Two Foundings and American Political Development

Elvin Lim

Description

The United States has experienced Two Foundings, not one. The framers of the second Constitution, the Federalists, were not operating in an ideational or institutional vacuum; rather, the document they drafted and ratified was designed to remedy the perceived flaws of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. To decouple the Two Foundings is to appreciate that there is no 'original meaning,' only original dissent. Because, on the insistence of the Anti-Federalists, prior and democratically sanctioned understandings of federalism and union had to be negotiated and partially grafted onto the new Constitution, the Constitution's Articles and the Bill of Rights do not cohere as well together as have conventionally been understood. Rather, they represent two antithetical orientations toward power, liberty, and republicanism. The Anti-Federalist and Federalist altercation over the necessity of the Second Founding generated coherent and self-contained philosophies that would become the indigenous core of American political thought that has been reproduced and transmitted across two centuries. The Second Founding, or the 'founding' we have come to know as the only one we had, would become a template for the unique species of politics and political debate that is prototypically American. American political development has occurred only after the political entrepreneurs of each generation locked horns in a Lovers' Quarrel about the relative priority of the principles of one of the Two Foundings, and succeeded in justifying and forging a durable expansion or contraction of federal authority.

The Lovers'Quarrel

The Two Foundings and American Political Development

Elvin Lim

1 The Lovers' Quarrel: A Tale of Two Foundings
2 Federalists v. Republicans
3 Anti-Federalism & the Howls of Jacksonian Democracy
4 The Civil War & Publius Redux
5 Anti-Federalism & the Progressive Creative Destruction
6 The New Deal & the Nationalized Rhetoric of the Small Republic
7 Anti-Federalism & the Reagan Revolution
8 Epilogue: The Modern Tea Party vs. Obama, & Beyond,
Appendix I: A Defense of APD defined as Durable Shifts in Federal Authority
Appendix II: The Federalist Legacy
Appendix III: The Anti-Federalist Legacy
Notes
Index

The Lovers'Quarrel

The Two Foundings and American Political Development

Elvin Lim

Author Information

Elvin Lim, Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Wesleyan University; author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency (OUP, 2008)

The Lovers'Quarrel

The Two Foundings and American Political Development

Elvin Lim

Reviews and Awards

"In this engaging and innovative approach to American political development and thought, Lim (Wesleyan Univ.) affirms the inner logic of American politics." - H. L. Cheek Jr., East Georgia State College, CHOICE

"In this remarkable book, Elvin Lim rethinks American political history as an endless debate between two intertwined positions: power to the national government versus power to the states, effective administration versus rising democracy, federalism versus anti-federalism. The Lovers' Quarrel is powerful, elegant, meticulous, sweeping, brilliant, optimistic, and altogether exciting. It should be required reading for political historians, political theorists, and any reader interested in understanding the American past, its present and its future." - James A. Morone, author of The Democratic Wish, Hellfire Nation, and The Devils We Know

"By probing the ways Americans' deep but conflicting commitments to decentralization and nationalism have shaped American political development and American political thought, Elvin Lim provides stimulating insights that will spark valuable debates and shape future scholarship." - Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

"Elvin Lim's The Lovers' Quarrel is a very important book because he has self-consciously and comprehensively sought to integrate the two fields of American Political Thought and American Political Development, both of which have attained a level of maturity, but which have proceeded in ignorance of, or at least by largely ignoring, each other. After Lim, this should no longer be possible." - Michael Zuckert, Editor-in-Chief, American Political Thought

"There is a Renaissance in federalism studies and Elvin Lim has made a singular contribution to it by reviving a serious analysis of the Anti-Federalists and their tradition (as well as much more). This is a compelling and important book which should be read by all scholars of federalism and American political theory." - Malcolm Feeley, Claire Sanders Clements Dean's Professor, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley

The Lovers'Quarrel

The Two Foundings and American Political Development

Elvin Lim

From Our Blog

1776, the First Founding, and America's past in the present

By Elvin Lim When a nation chooses to celebrate the date of its birth is a decision of paramount significance. Indeed, it is a decision of unparalleled importance for the world's "First New Nation," the United States, because it was the first nation to self-consciously write itself into existence with a written Constitution.

Posted on July 4, 2014

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