Alan Taylor, a historian from the University of Virginia, has written an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that Americans wrongly disparage Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in comparison to the Founders. Instead of recognizing their similarities to this year’s candidates, Taylor says that we treat the Founders as mythical giants. But, according to Taylor, they were as divided and divisive as these nominees. And the Founders tolerated a society with less sound norms than our own. Moreover, we should just accept that Founders did not resolve the “core principles of our government,” leaving it up to us to fight about them.
This op-ed is misleading and flawed in many respects. It exaggerates the differences in principle as opposed to politics among the Founders. It does not give credit to the Founders’ principles for being a primary cause of the improvement in social norms in America. And its claim that the Constitutional text does not settle core governing principles is a conventional and undefended cliche of the academic Left.
First, while the Democratic-Republicans and Federalists had strong political differences, their respective appointees to the Supreme Court were united on the constitutional principles of creating a strong but limited federal government whose focus was creating a commercial society. That justices of different parties agreed on so much after deliberation is strong evidence that there was substantial, even if not unanimous agreement, on core principles.
For instance, Chief Justice John Marshall and Justice Joseph Story hardly ever diverged on the resolution of constitutional cases, despite being appointed by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson respectively.
