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Democracy and the Constitution: Essays by Walter Berns (Landmarks of Contemporary Political Thought)

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The strongest reaction I had as I read through the essays contained in this book was, "why wasn't I taught this information in any of the schooling I had growing up or in college?" I suspect that unless you have had an especially fortunate exposure to the actual history of the founding and the writing of our Constitution that you will have the same mix of shock and delight. It's not as if I haven't read anything about American history or that I haven't been open to hearing about these ideas. It is that I simply had not had them available to me. At least, if I read them or heard them anywhere they were drowned out by the constant beating of the progressive living Constitution drum.

Walter Berns is the John M. Olin Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University and an AEI resident fellow. His entire career has been providing first rate scholarship on our Constitution. He has taught at other colleges, as well, and has his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In addition to being a Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright Fellow, he received the National Humanities Medal in 2005.

This book contains twenty essays Dr. Berns has presented in various publications or as lectures. The essays are grouped into four parts. The first is on Constitutionalism, that is, various important aspects of what it means to have a Constitution, aspects of our Constitution, the difference between Natural Law and Locke's Law of Nature, and what the idea of multiculturalism can mean to the Constitution.

Without any background to the topics Berns is discussing, his concern for the possibility of Constitutionalism in a completely positivist and relativist culture takes a bit of orientation. However, once one gets one's bearings, it is a very important argument and concern. The fifth essay on the way the founders solved the problem of democracy in our representative republic is quite important. Our country was never meant to be a plebiscite, no matter what you hear on the even news about a poll saying the people want this or that and then browbeating the Congress, President, and Supreme Court to provide it.

The essays in Part II discuss aspects of the Constitution and our political system. I found the essay on why we have a Vice-President stunningly surprising. It turns out that it has nothing whatever to do with providing a replacement President. Instead it has to do with creating a majority support for the President when the natural tendency would be for each state to vote for its own candidate.

Berns also provides interesting essays on the Electoral College, protecting pornography in the name of free speech, the Pledge of Allegiance and the "Under God" controversy, teaching Patriotism and much more.

Part III has a very important essay on the assault on our Universities from the sixties until now. He also introduces what the toxin of Deconstructionism represents and the great influence of Paul De Man. He also discusses De Man's fall from Parnassus when it was discovered that he collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War.

He ends the book with two essays about people who were friends and influences in his life.

This book will have a prominent place on my bookshelves and I cannot imagine that you would not want to read these essays. They will contribute a great deal to your understanding of our Constitution and its historical and philosophical origins and how it compares to the hundreds of other constitutions tried around the world since it was written.

Strongly recommended.

Democracy and the Constitution is a compilation of essays by scholar and historian Walter Berns (recipient of the 2005 National Humanities Medal) concerning such issues as natural law, civil rights, states' rights, multiculturalism, patriotism, the First Amendment, the role of academic and religious institutions, and especially, a solid defense of the strengths of the American Constitution as a governing and socially binding document. Berns particularly notes that lawyers and judges are crucial in shaping the living constitution, as any serious question of constitutional law is sure to be presented to the court system in due time. Examining the lessons of history as well as contemporary legal and governmental theory, Democracy and the Constitution is a vibrant contribution to political science shelves and especially recommended for college library collections.