Reddit reviews Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution
We found 3 Reddit comments about Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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So what's interesting is that what Akhil Reed Amar says about Madison isn't a quote. He's paraphrasing Madison's fears over a weaker Virginia presence in a popular vote -- which is true. No one is disputing that. Even the author of the Tenth Amendment Center article you cite references that. But my argument is that slavery was not the main reason the south wanted the electoral college. In fact, many northerners wanted the electoral college too!
Here's where my historian warning alarm went off when I was reading the Vox Article:
>Then there's the theory that the framers really didn't believe in democracy. But they put the Constitution to a vote, they created a House of Representatives that was directly elected, they believed in direct election of governors, and there are all sorts of other democratic features in the Constitution. So that theory isn't so explanatory.
The fact that he doesn't acknowledge that the Constitution was created to limit democracy proves that he is unfamiliar with the recent historiographical conversations of the last 15 years. Here is why I believe this. Unruly Americans and the origins of the Constitution by Woody Holton, Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution both clearly (and effectively) argue that that the Constitution was created, in part, due to the Founders' fears over unchecked Democracy happening at the state level. Similarly, The Power of the Purse: A History of American Public Finance, 1776- 1790 by E. James Ferguson doesn't directly argue this point, but supports it by showing that it was the opinion of many of the founders that the national government was struggling primarily because of the democratic power in the states. Unruly Americans and Taming Democracy are highly praised books (as evident by their many positive reviews in academic journals) because of their effective arguments. The fact that he dismisses their arguments tells me that he's either being disingenuous or simply uninformed of the current historical discussions on this topic. But I don't condemn him for not being entirely up to date with the literature.
He's not a historian, he's a lawyer. He knows how and why the constitution should be interpreted, but he is not as fully versed on the historical method. He likely hasn't spent as much time digging into the bitterness, squabbles, and endless infighting that caused the US Constitution to come about the way that it did, as a historian would. (Likewise, he knows more about it's interpretation than historians would!) And again, I'm not saying he's entirely wrong. He's right that people like Madison saw this situation as a bonus -- but there's no way that it was the main reason. Slavery was a factor, just not the factor. Folks like Alexander Hamilton truly feared Virginian power, and if he saw it as a way of truly empowering the south, he would not have been one of the biggest proponents of the electoral college. For me, Amer's argument just doesn't work.
Tl;Dr: The professor in the Vox article isn't a historian, he's a lawyer who isn't trained like a historian. The fact that he seems unaware of the major interpretations of the history of constitution over the last decade suggests he's not as informed as historians would be on this matter.
Edit: please let me know if this makes sense? I realized it's kind of a long rant.
I would recommend Terry Bouton's Taming Democracy: "The People", The Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution, which goes into great detail about the views of your typical colonial on "independence" and "freedom" (which were generally viewed in economic terms, and not so much political ones).