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Cargando... A Disquisition on Government and Selections from the Discoursepor John C. Calhoun
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. While some may conclude that Calhoun's political thought was a justification for slavery, the principles at its heart are, in the words of Professor Massey, "theoretically applicable to any federal system of government that takes seriously the idea of preserving regional power to check the majority will of the entire nation." -- Classics of Liberty sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
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Written between 1843 and 1848, John C. Calhoun's A Disquisition on Government addresses such diverse issues as states' rights and nullification, slavery, and the growth of the federal judicial power. Articulating Calhoun's perspective on government as seen from the point of view of a permanent minority (the South), A Disquisition on Government relies on the doctrine of a concurrent majority. Calhoun's concurrent majority captures the idea that because unchecked majority rule can lead to tyranny over minority interests, minority groups should possess veto power government actions that affect them. Although Calhoun primarily intended this doctrine as a justification for slavery, the broader idea of a concurrent majority as a protection for minority rights has since become a pillar of American political thought. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Calhoun clearly was heavily influenced by Aristotle and Adam Smith, and his sophistication and perceptiveness stems from them. His argument is deep and nuanced, and shows complete command of the subject matter. What's unfortunate is that, because many members of Congress at the time from his region were labelled "Calhounites," Calhoun is best remembered as a Southern hypocrite, favoring plantation chattel-slavery and clamoring for more democracy. This is because Calhoun resisted the majority under Andrew Jackson's administration and because thirty years later people from the same region resisted the majority under Lincoln. It also stems from the fact that Jefferson Davis, who led the Confederacy in the 1860s, was Secretary of War, just as Calhoun had been, but that's an extraordinarily weak link. This is not logic at its finest. By imposing modern norms and mores onto him, and by imposing modern logic (which is much worse, since that's a total oxymoron), we miss the depth and range of insight he provides, and we also draw false historical conclusions; many of those same Southerners were not individuals he had any respect for or intimate connection with. Modern readers tend not to understand Calhoun, but that's a product of their own educational shortcomings and not of the strength or weakness of Calhoun's political philosophy.
I would argue that this text trumps all of the great works of political theory--Plato and Aristotle and Machiavelli and Hobbes and Milton and Locke and Montesquieu and Burke and The Federalist and so on--and, in 80 pages, makes the strongest possible case for respecting the Constitution as it was set up. I've read all of them. I've read Acton and Weber and Marx and Hayek and Spinoza and Descartes and Montaigne and Bacon and Thucydides and Livy and Gibbon as well. Calhoun's the best and ought to be treated as such, though with the caveat that he is terrible with comma splices.
And for anyone to give this book one star is comical. ( )