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

If you have spent much time talking about politics or watching others do so on TV, you know that the topic of what the founders of our country would think about a given issue or what they would do about that issue frequently surfaces. In this volume, Richard Brookhiser explores this topic. An early chapter in his book compares our world to the founders' world. The rest of the book is devoted to what the founders would think about a plethora of issues, including liberty, God, money, war and peace, male-female relations, race, and politics. Brookhiser even explores how the founders would view modern-day issues such as terrorism and WMD. Of course, "the founders" cannot be viewed as a homogenous group, as some of them had widely varying views (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, for example, had big disagreements on many issues). Thus, on many issues, Brookhiser simply discusses what one or two of the founders would think about a given topic. The book concludes with an amusing appendix laying out what types of blogs each of the founders might have conducted if they were alive today and not then.

This book is a romp through the personalities of the founders -- really a great book. Brookhiser is familiar with these guys and brings their personalities and styles to life. It's not a boring old history book (I love boring old history books). It is full of laugh lines and I really enjoyed it. The founders were such CHARACTERS. This book makes them lively again. Brookhiser weaves together the personal lives, letters, public pronouncements, and scandals surrounding Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and Washington (and more!), and he does it topically. Did they always practice what they preached? Indeed, not! But... they were thoughtful, provocative, passionate, and committed. It is so richly refreshing to read a book with so little political correctness. The founders used none -- they were blunt. And obstinate. This is a joy of a book. If you just want a little taste of the founders, without reading a boring old history book, then these little 224-pages are for you. If you love the founders and like their style, this is also for you. The money quote of the book is on page 31. Want to know what the founders would do? "America is about liberty, or it is about nothing." Be sure to check out the posthumous blogging after page 221. Heh heh heh.

Cool book ! This book is for anyone who knows their our orginial early American History and is just curious about what they may have thought. Great to combine older history with a twist ... current issues.

Richard Brookhiser did a great job of taking modern day issues and correlating them to similar issues from the time of our founding fathers. He then gave historic arguments from the founding fathers as they wrestled with the problems of the day. To often we lump together people from a particular period of time as having the samve views withouth understanding the debate between them. This book showed how different the various founding fathers thought as to how the United States should function. This book belongs in every American home.

We'll never know for sure what the founders would have done in a variety of situations. The author utilizes imagination to make projections of how they would act based upon the events of the birth of our country. First, the founders believed in Divine Oversight or some form of invisible intervention by a deity. Benjamin Franklin was a unitarian. Together, the founders supported democracy and encouraged its nurturing. They discouraged freelance covert operations according to the author. Public and private education were both supported. Freedom of the press had its limits when journalists were excluded from the Constitutional Convention. The presentation makes clear that the founders intended to end slavery eventually. At the time, there wasn't a sufficient concensus to do so because of the considerable economic vestiture involved. In retrospect, the decision to put off the end of slavery to future generations was an error leading to the eventual Civil War. George Washington had extensive plans to develop the Potomac. The former president ordered General John Sullivan to destroy Indian villages in order to respond to random massacres. Generally, the founders were excellent writers and most knew multiple languages. The work would be very helpful in providing some well-researched perspective on the founders at the beginning of the nation's march forward.