On the cusp of the 250th anniversary of American independence, Government Professors Jack Pitney and George Thomas recently published essays reflecting on the core principles and people of the nation’s founding.
With different approaches, the two longtime faculty members examine the abated or enduring presence of the country’s formative ideals in contemporary politics and society.
Pitney, the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Politics, published “Trump’s Affront to the Founding” in The Bulwark. Reflecting the practice of Open Academy commitments to freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and constructive dialogue, Pitney presents a critique on how far American political leadership has veered from the fundamental principles on which the United States of America was founded.
Specifically in his analysis, Pitney looks at how the Declaration’s commitments to equality, limits on executive power, and due process are at odds with President Trump’s actions in ways that would have “stunned the Declaration’s signers.”
Thomas, the Burnet C. Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions, published “The Most Important Founder You’ve Never Heard Of,” in Washington Monthly. In the essay, Thomas explores the biography, philosophies, influence, and “ignominious end” of James Wilson, one of only six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and one of the “most important founders and … the least known.”
Historical details about Wilson are presented by Thomas in the context of reviewing Jesse Wegman’s “splendid new book,” The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution. Thomas writes that “Wegman positions Wilson as the intellectual godfather to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which sewed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution into a seamless garment.”
His essay also demonstrates that important developments in American constitutionalism can be traced back to Wilson’s view of a nation founded on constitutional self-government: “Most significantly,” Thomas wrote, “he penned and insisted on the famous opening lines of the Constitution: We the People.”