What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers [Hardcover]

Richard Brookhiser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2006

Why do Americans care so much about the Founding Fathers? After all, the French don't ask themselves, "What would Napoleon do?" But Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Adams built our country, wrote our user's manuals--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution--and ran the nation while it was still under warranty and could be returned to the manufacturer. If anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, they did and they still do. Richard Brookhiser has been writing, talking, and thinking about the Founders for years. Now he channels them. What would Hamilton think about free trade? What would Franklin make of the national obsession with values? What would Washington say about gays in the military? Examining a host of issues from terrorism to women's rights to gun control, Brookhiser reveals why we still turn to the Founders in moments of struggle, farce, or disaster--just as Lincoln, FDR, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Clinton have done before us. Written with Brookhiser's trademark eloquence--and a good dose of wit--while drawing on his deep knowledge of American history, What Would the Founders Do? sheds new light on the disagreements and debates that have shaped our country from the beginning. Brookhiser challenges us to think and act with the clarity that the Founders brought to the task of making a democratic country. Now, more than ever, we need these creators of America--argumentative, expansive, funny know-it-alls--to help us solve the issues that threaten to divide us.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

[Signature]Reviewed by Michael LindIt might be thought that nothing new could be said about America's founding fathers, in the midst of the contemporary avalanche of tomes about Washington, Jefferson and other early American leaders. But Rick Brookhiser, inspired perhaps by a Christian motto—"What Would Jesus Do?" (WWJD)—has come up with a way to describe the views of the architects of the American republic that is as entertaining as it is informative."Americans have been asking what the founders would do since the founders died," writes Brookhiser, a journalist and historian (Alexander Hamilton and The Way of the WASP). Combining the skills of a first-rate writer with those of a medium at a séance, Brookhiser channels the spirits of eminent early Americans in discussing contemporary public debates. At times, Brookhiser has to stretch to find an analogy between the era of the founders and today, such as his comparison between stem cell research and the old practice of robbing graves for medical research.In other cases, however, the conceit works to shed light on present and past alike. Should the U.S. attempt to spread democracy around the world? Brookhiser makes a case for the caution of Alexander Hamilton rather than the optimism of Thomas Jefferson. The war on drugs? "The founders would not have fought a war on drugs," but would have taxed them instead, Brookhiser declares, reasoning from the excise tax on whiskey imposed by the federal government. What would the founders do about Social Security? "Social Security follows none of their models (family provision, charity, reward for service, investment)." The book reveals that many of the public policy questions confronting the early American republic are similar to challenges Americans wrestle with today. The values of 18th-century Americans, by contrast, were radically different and benighted by modern standards. Jefferson, while opposing slavery, argued that blacks were inferior and should be expatriated from the United States. The founders took a male-dominated society for granted, though Hamilton was willing to consider sweatshop work for women: "It is worthy of particular remark, that, in general, women and children are rendered more useful... by manufacturing establishments than they would otherwise be."With a rare union of wit and scholarship, What Would the Founders Do? presents history as a source of continuing debates, rather than as a set of answers. Comparing the founders to present-day Americans, Brookhiser concludes: "We can be as intelligent as they were, and as serious, as practical, and as brave.... We can; as they said, all men are created equal."(May 5)Michael Lind, the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America's Greatest President.
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From Booklist

It is a long and honored (and often abused) tradition to refer to the Founders while stating one's position on contemporary political controversies. For example, during the early, passionate arguments over New Deal legislation, FDR partisans asserted their intentions to use Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Brookhiser is a celebrated historian who has written extensively about some of the Founding Fathers. Here he brings his vast knowledge and considerable wit to bear on analyzing how they might approach some of our currently divisive issues. About political partisanship, Brookhiser points out that most Founders deplored "factions" but were willing to unsheathe swords in a good political tussle. Gay rights? Brookhiser doubts any of them would have promoted it, since even the "libertarian" Jefferson supported repression of sodomites. In a sense, this is a frivolous book, since the Founders were generally as ideologically inconsistent as liberals and conservatives are today. Who knows how they would have reacted to problems in a world they could not imagine? But as an intellectual exercise, this is an enjoyable, stimulating work. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (May 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465008194
• ISBN-13: 978-0465008193
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,694 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pleasant surprise, September 23, 2009

By 

Jeff Barnaby "Jeff Barnaby" (Richmond, Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers (Hardcover)

This book came as a gift last Christmas. At first it didn't look like it was going to have much to offer - a short and simple book from yet another writer trying to retroactively impose the views and opinions of the Founders on today's issues and events. But, it was a gift, and so it was thrown onto the "books to read" stack where it figured to be short work before getting relegated to the miscellaneous section of the history shelf on the bookcase. It did not take too many pages to realize that first impressions, in this instance, were quite wrong. This book has a good deal to say and it does so consistently and efficiently from beginning to end. In good, clean form it takes a single idea and looks at it from a different angle in each chapter. The end result is a book that is thorough, to the point, and enjoyable to read.

While the title indicates that this is simply a book about how the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and the rest of the founding bunch would deal with today's issues, there is something more to be had from this book. And that something is an important point which has been frequently lost on recent generations of Americans. It's almost assumed at this point to speak about the American Founders as though they were a unified body in both action and thought. Before considering how "the founders" might deal with our issues, and when considering how they actually dealt with their issues, it needs to be understood, first and foremost, that as a whole they never really agreed all that much with each other about anything, other then the fact they wanted to be rid of English rule - and even with that there was some squabbling.

The reason that this point is one of importance is that when we hear of the Founders today, and we do quite a bit from quite a few, it always seems to be from someone representing a particular interest group (a politician, an educator, a journalist, or some other hack-intellectual) who is speaking to us about the founders as if they were pinning their name onto their lapels suggesting that "the founders" as a whole, would support us. This is almost never the case. And this is a book, whether or not by design, that does a superb job of speaking to that point.

This is a worthwhile read for fans of history, or fans of reading period. And, as it did for me, it will make an excellent gift. Recommended to anybody - 5 stars.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Premise, Doesn't Fully Deliver, August 13, 2009

By 

History Buff (Clovis, NM) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers (Paperback)

How many of us haven't considered the founding fathers' reactions every time we receive a speeding ticket, pass a police checkpoint, or read about a Department of Homeland Security? By premise alone, this book is a timely and necessary addition to contemporary political works. However, the delivery is a mixed bag. Some of the questions are insightful, well-researched and informative. As other reviewers indicated, others are not and simply regurgitate well known history, as an undergrad would on a history 101 exam. I do enjoy Brookheiser as a writer, and his list of websites based upon the foiunding fathers' personality traits was quite humorous and fit well with what we knew about these men.

Perhaps I expected too much, as a work such of this could fill volumes, given sufficient research. This book, although enjoyable to read at times, is a highly abridged version of what this book could have been.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What COULD The Founders Do Now?, May 16, 2006

By 

Warner Todd Huston "History Minded" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers (Hardcover)

Richard Brookhiser has put together a very quick reading book detailing many of the Founder's thoughts and contrasting them with today's issues in "What Would the Founders Do?-- Our Questions, Their Answers".

To the more well read reader on the history of the founding of the country, little of this book will be in any way new. But, I'd suggest this book is a fantastic handbook for young readers past the age of 15. Young students would do themselves well to read this book and become familiar with some of the things the Founders thought and some of the situations they faced. They will find it in an easy to read and understand format, free of too much boring background, dates and historiocity. But, this handy book should also tend to help inform all people who are only dimly aware of what the Founders intended for our country and might help answer not only why the Founders are still relevant but might help teach many of the ideals that this country was formed upon.

Unfortunately, it might also tend to make some people who claim that the Founders era is past and now irrelevant more sure that their world is long past and we that we therefore should "moveon"... excuse the pun. Of course, no sense can get through to someone who thinks this way anyway, I'd guess.

The one thing that I don't "get" with this book, though, is the last sort of comical bit about the "Founder's Blogs". This is four pages of humorous asides about what the Founders might put in a blog should they still be around. I have to say, I just don't understand what this is doing in this book? I suppose they are sort of clever, but this chapter just doesn't seem relevant to the rest of the book at all. It seems more like something that Brookhiser should have on his website as opposed to ending his book with.

Still, I say this is a great book for the young. Get one for every teen in your family. It'll do them good since we don't seem to have any schools that teach such stuff anymore! Kudos to Brookhiser for a quick, fun read that might help our youth.