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Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America

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No one should criticize or condemn the Founding Fathers of this country until they've read either this book by Tom West or every one of the speeches, letters, and other writings of the Founders for themselves. One of the problems in today's country is that we have a bunch of self-appointed PC historians that regularly badger the Founders for falling short of today's enlightened sense of justice without taking the time to read what the Founders had to say on these issues themselves. West lets the Founders speak for themselves by documenting both their writings and their actions. Truly, a valuable contribution to the study of American history.

I hope to see more from Tom West.

Did the Founders think that blacks were morally and intellectually inferior? Yes, most of them did. Did the Founders think that blacks were still fully entitled to the unalienable rights of man? Yes, most of them did. Were intellectual and social debates as multifaceted then as now. You bet. That's why it is possible to find facts and quotations to support a variety of assaults on the Founders, based on selective evidence and anachronistic, collectivist values. This book looks at the people and the circumstances of the founding period in light of the individualist values of the time and the social conflicts and necessities those people had to reconcile. The mere fact that they created a nation more free and more fair than any that had gone before should make us doubt the malign, revisionist, politically-correct histories we've seen in recent decades. This book is not only very good, but much needed.

Thomas West assembles a compact read in "Vindicating the Founders" that spiritedly challenges the modern critique of America's Founders.

"Vindicating" shows that post-revolutionary America was, without a doubt, a shining example to the rest of the world of a republican democracy, with thoroughly advanced notions of voting rights, property rights, and welfare.

Rejecting those who criticize the Founders for what they didn't do, namely, abolish slavery, Mr. West shows that the philosophy embodied in the Declaration of Independence practically animated the Founders actions, making early America a model of freedom and laying the course for the ultimate extinction of slavery.

"Vindicating" is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise on early America. It aims to debunk modern myths that denigrate the Founders, and, in this, "Vindicating" is more than up to the task.

Reviewer: Chuck DeVore is a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010, a California State Assemblyman, he served as a Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Department of Defense from 1986 to 1988, retired from the Army National Guard as a lieutenant colonel, and is the co-author of "China Attacks."

Thomas G. West does a masterful job of explaining the commonly held political and social beliefs of the Founders, all the while he debunks numerous myths from both the Left and the Right. West, a disciple of Leo Strauss and Harry Jaffa, stays within the tradition of natural law theory as currently advocated by the Clairemont Institute as he explains the true meanings of the words found in the Declaration and the Constitution. Each chapter begins with quotations from various historians or influential thinkers who have misinterpreted their meanings, then West gathers quotes from the Founders within context and gives the reader the proper meaning. This is then followed by what might be called application and social critique, telling us things that may surprise us.

Although I think he underplays the racism that was evident in their thoughts and behaviors, I believe he is correct in most of his conclusions and I learned quite a bit. It could be a conservative compliment to *Lies My Teacher Told Me* by James Loewen. For those who want to gather the true meaning of the what the USA was founded on, they could get no better book than this.

It is a crime that the founders of America are dismissed because they are represented as failing to meet our present PC standards of faux morality. This terrific book takes on every PC misconception about them and sets the record straight. While never presenting them is marble pillars of morality, the author puts all of the issues in their proper context and demonstrates clearly the intelligence, morality, and rightness of our founders.

One of the most famous of the old canards that you will still hear is that the founders only considered slaves to be 3/5 of a human being because it says so right there in the Constitution. How sad that misunderstanding and misrepresentation is. Because each state was given a number of representatives based upon the number of residents, the issue was whom do you count. You have to first ask yourself whom the representatives from the slave holding states would represent. The slaves? Of course not!

So, if the rights of the slaves were not going to be protected, to give their slaveholders the ability to count those slaves as people and thereby become over-represented in Congress would actually work against interests of those people trapped in slavery. Those opposing slavery wanted the slaves to remain uncounted for representation. The slaveholders wanted them to count as a full person (does that mean the slaveholders cared about the human rights of the slaves more than the abolitionists?). The compromise was to count them as 3/5. However, it is essential to remember that those who wanted the slaves counted as a whole person were uninterested in the rights of those human beings and those that wanted them uncounted actually had the interests of the slaves more in mind.

Professor West also takes on the issues of property rights, who had the right to vote and why, women and their rights at the time of the revolution, poverty, and immigration.

A good and informative read. Every student should read it as an antidote to the misinformation they get during their indoctrination at the public schools. This book will actually aid their education and help them develop a solid understanding of what is really at stake in our country. And it might spark some lively debate when they go to class armed with some information the teacher will likely find inconvenient or even bewildering. One of my daughters actually had to go to the blackboard and explain the 3/5 issue carefully to the teacher and class. The teacher commented that she had never thought of it that way before. Which, of course, means, that she had always taught it as a political tenet rather than history.

I had a hearty laugh after I read the review of pistos@pacbell.net, who claims that West underplays the racism that was evident in the thoughts of the Founders! Has this person even READ the book, or just the chapter headings? The major point of the book is to vindicate the founders, and one major area of vindication is in the area of race. Where many erroneously claim the Founders were racists, West sets out to disprove this allegation, and does so meticulously. For the last poster to say he agrees with most of West's conclusions but disagrees with his treatment of Race is like saying one agrees with most of Christianity, just not that bit about Jesus!

Most of the negative reviews of this work cite its author's being a follower of the conservative University of Chicago political philosopher, Leo Strauss. Though I despise Leo Strauss as much as they might, their criticisms are off-base, because West here documents that conservative interpretations of the U.S. Constitution are false. He documents that the predominant intentions of America's founders were progressive: condemning slavery and seeking its abolition, supportive of equal rights for Blacks and Whites, supportive of equal rights for women and men, supportive of voting rights for the poor, etc. Leo Strauss's support for Plato's "philosopher kings" reigning over a powerless deceived citizenry is alien to West's book.

West's documentation is sound. His criticisms of other historians, even including of liberal ones such as Charles Beard and Gordon Wood, are on the mark, but will inevitably offend the vast majority of historians, who have built upon falsehoods they've derived from such historians.

This book is well organized, as a topic-by-topic critique of previous historians' misrepresentations of the supposed conservatism of people such as Thomas Jefferson -- whom, for example, West convincingly documents did believe in equal rights for Blacks and Whites, notwithstanding Gordon Woods's having asserted to the exact contrary.

Though Leo Strauss was an extreme conservative, West has provided here a book which argues, in a more thorough way than has previously been done, for interpreting the original intent of the U.S. Constitution as having been progressive. West's book is, in fact, the best presentation yet of the case that jurists such as Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, William Rehnquist, and Sam Elito (misspelling intentional), base their rulings upon a false "history" backing their "original intent" of the Constitution. West in this book outlines a powerful case for interpreting the Constitution's original intent as being vastly more progressive than even today's liberals. West carries Gordon Woods's "radicalism of the American Revolution" to a point that is even more progressive than Woods understood or imagined.

The only flaw I find in this book is that it should have been longer. West should have cited, far more than he did, the vile, extremely conservative, views that America's great Founders were fighting against in their shaping of America's Constitution. Fortunately, those conservatives were, at worst, only accommodated, not writing and controlling the Constitution. The Constitution was severely wounded by these accommodations (such as regarding slavery -- necessary in order to keep Southern states in the Union), but West should have made that point, and not diminished it by underemphasizing the barriers that America's great Founders had to overcome in order to produce a basically progressive Constitution which could hold the nation together for at least a long enough time for America to become powerful enough to matter to world history. I think that America's great Founders got the balance remarkably right, but West should not have underplayed how difficult a challenge that was for them to achieve.

West's book is a much needed corrective to the current drift of American politics toward the extreme Right. I hope that he will write a revised version that is three times as long, and that will make use of far more of the supposed "contrary evidence" so as to make his own points even more convincingly than he has here. West's book is the most dangerous I've ever seen to today's Republican Party.

West doesn't apologize for the unfortunate aspects of America's history. I think his methods of helping readers understand the perspectives of the colonial period and how some have grossly misinterpreted them are solid. Everyone, regardless of political affiliation or ideology should read this book, and at least ponder what it has to say. C'mon, we're all supposed to be open-minded right? There, you have no excuse to pass this book by.

West paints a much more clear, uncorrupted and distinct picture of the Founders, their true philosophies and overall beliefs, than the radical and extremist of the left would have us believe. His argument is sound and justified to anyone who really studies the writtings of the founding erra with an open mind. He effectively dispells the current phobia that most scholars today have of giving them the respect and admiration they are due. Of course without such slander from present day acedemia, the far left would not be able to justifiy their restructuring and dismantling of the true vision of our heritage. Those who care nothing for the true meaning of liberty, justice, sacrifice and patriotism. And those who also crave simply power, single minded victory and justification for their special interest at any cost. The serious student of the founding erra who begins with the Bible, and moves through The Declaration of Independence, The Magna Carta, the Articles of Confederation, The Constitution of the United States, The Federalist Papers, We Hold These Truths (by Mortimer J Adler), Our Sacred Honor and others like The Death of Outrage and High Crimes and Misdemeanors can only become more firmly convinced of the truth about those great men and women who lived the founding of this, our great Republic. A nation that is the single most important light of the world. Yet a light which fades even as we prosper. The enlightened mind and serious student must also feel saddened by what so many in the Judicial, Legislative and Administrative Branches have done to this fragile treasure, in the long history of humanity lately. Especially those in the Senate and White House who have proven they hold no regard for the founding principles, philosophies and guidelines so distinctly laid out for us by the founders. Guidlines about the characters of our leaders and the immeasurable duty laid upon each and all of them. A duty which so many have failed to fullfill towards the American People over the last year. The Democrats have let the dream slip away. When there was a chance to reinvigorate into politics a new wave or virtue. They allowed the chance to slip through their fingers like sand. I applaud West and his work, his courage in a world that seems to have turned from the truth. Where honor and respect for the past no longer resignate in the minds of the educated. And I pitty those who do not, can not, or will not see the greatness of these founders. How sad to see so many turn away from the truth. Instead they support a new age of vengence against the founding fathers and mothers. Individuals whom we could learn so much from in todays chaotic downslide towards a less than virtuous society. This is a book for all ages; past, present and future and should be required reading from high school on.

West is trying to understand the founder's on their terms and not ours. He correctly points out huge mistakes in secondary and college textbooks. He quotes inaccurate textbooks and then shows, using the founders writings, why views often stated in these texts are wrong.

West is trying the be descriptive about the Founder's views. He is not trying to agree or disagree with the Founder's views, and then conclude with a bunch of "we should do this" kind of statements. He leaves judgment of the founder's ideologies on philosophical grounds for other venues. He is merely trying to describe the founders views, using their writings and legislative efforts as his evidence, and then using this evidence to obliterate the idea that the founders really only meant "freedom" for white male land owners.

Even if you disagree with his conclusions, the facts about early America he presents in the book are astounding. Did you know that black free women were allowed to vote in New Jersey in the 1790s? I didn't. The presentation of some of these facts alone make the purchase of the book.

My only criticism: The chapter of women's rights is not that great. Struggle through it and finish the book.

My view has always been that many historical views cannot be boiled down to slogans. (example: The US founders only intended white male land owners to vote.) History is usually much more complex and ambigious. I think this presentation only confirms my view of history.

West is on the right politically. That is not a bad thing mind you but I think should take that into account as his view then might not be entirely neutral