Posted on 01/29/2017 1:51:53 AM PST by iowamark
Michael Klarman talked about his book The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, in which he recalls the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, from its tenuous start, according to the author the Philadelphia convention almost didn’t occur, to the many competing interests and internal debates that marked the Constitution’s creation. Michael Klarman spoke with Patrick Spero at the National Constitution Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at c-span.org ...
Thank you for the info, KC.
I’m still reading David McCullough’s *John Adams*; in it, I don’t get the sense of a coup; contention, yes, but not the chaos of a coup.
Oh, I don’t think the author is implying any Chaos. It is just plain the the full blown dust-bin for the Articles of Confederation was never anticipated by the states as the convention was put together.
Much like my aversion to the Con-Con that many call for saying it can be restricted to amendments. You get all the states sending a delegation to a big meeting and who knows what comes out of it. In the case of 1787 it was a full replacement of our original post-war government that was not expected — A coup by any other name.
B. Franklin: any assembly of men bring with them “all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests and their selfish views.”
** In the end, however, I believe the coup thesis is more misleading than helpful. We cannot say that the Framers illicitly seized the power of the federal government; there was no government to seize. And only a few of them held office in the new national administration in any case. Moreover, Anti-Federalists like James Monroe and George Clinton went on to win the highest positions in the system they had initially opposed. No family, or cabal, or interest group, or political party grasped power through the drafting and ratification process.**
https://newrepublic.com/article/137310/founding-fathers-power-grab
Perhaps we are witnessing a *Trump Coup*; The “transfer of power from the many to the few.” :)
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