Thomas G. West's "The Political Theory of the American Founding"

The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom by Thomas G. West Publisher: Cambridge University Press (April 3, 2017). 428 pp.

This book provides a complete overview of the American Founders' political theory, covering natural rights, natural law, state of nature, social compact, consent, and the policy implications of these ideas. The book is intended as a response to the current scholarly consensus, which holds that the Founders' political thought is best understood as an amalgam of liberalism, republicanism, and perhaps other traditions. West argues that, on the contrary, the foundational documents overwhelmingly point to natural rights as the lens through which all politics is understood. The book explores in depth how the Founders' supposedly republican policies on citizen character formation do not contradict but instead complement their liberal policies on property and economics. Additionally, the book shows how the Founders' embraced other traditions in their politics, such as common law and Protestantism.

I found this to be a very rewarding and informative read as well as a welcome rebuttal to the critics (among the right and the left) who have taken to faulting the American founding for the present ills of our nation, revealing that the founders were actually far more coherent and unified in their theoretical understanding of the basis of the nation's founding in natural rights, and their application of such in fashioning our government, then is generally alleged in our times. Honestly, after reading Patrick J. Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed, West's scholarship and defense of the founding comes across like a refreshing breath of fresh spring air.

Particularly surprising to me was the extent to which his critique extends not only to the usual suspects (Michael Zuckert, Patrick Deneen) but various scholars and historians I had otherwise held in high regard (Mary Ann Glendon, Gordon S. Wood). There's a good, if critical, discussion here regarding some deficiencies with West's approach, but on the whole I found West to be careful in his treatment of the sources. He's fair in the sense that neither the progressive left nor the right (libertarian and/or 'paleo-conservative') will come away pleased with this work, though I would much enjoy seeing some engagement with it.

West makes the salient point that in the study of political thought the tendency is to confine one's perspective to the 'founding documents' on a federal level, which is detrimental insofar as the founders left domestic policy to the states -- consequently, and it is only by a review of the wealth of largely-ignored documentation from the latter, that we can acquire a true understanding and appreciation of their thought.

What I especially appreciated then was the sheer depth and scope of West's survey, encompassing not only the individual writings of Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Washington, et al.; the Federalist papers and the original founding documents as such -- but his most rewarding investigation of the founding documents, bills of rights, laws and ordinances of all thirteen colonies, by which the reader can gain a sense of their consistent and theoretically-rooted understanding on a vast array of issues and questions, including: the position of church and state; government support for education and the cultivation of morality; the promotion of virtue and the founder's understanding of such; the proper definition of "freedom" and the pursuit of happiness; the defense of property, free markets and 'sound money'.

Related Reviews and Discussion

• Founding philosophy, by Michael Anton. [Review]. The New Criterion June 2018:

  West sets for himself the seemingly modest task of “explaining” the American founders’ political views—first, their political theory per se, and second, how they applied that theory to the practical task of building a new government. The qualifier is necessary because while we think we understand the founding, West shows that we—especially, all too often, those who’ve been specifically trained to explain it to others—do not.

  We misunderstand the founding, first, because of the dismal state of modern education, and second, owing to deliberate efforts to libel the founders and their works. The founders’ political theory has been, by turns, denounced, misrepresented, mocked, dismissed, and forgotten. The culprits have been and are of the Left, Right, and Center. The founders’ detractors include fascists and communists, despots and anarchists, Yankees and Southerners, ardent abolitionists and slaveholding oligarchs, eastern elites and western individualists, foreign enemies and domestic terrorists, anti-American leftists and patriotic conservatives, smug atheists and the deeply religious.

• A Partial Vindication of Thomas West, by James Stoner. Law and Liberty 12/11/17.
• The Founders in Full, by Vincent Phillip Munoz. Claremont Review of Books 10/19/17:

  By reintroducing the moral underpinnings of the founders’ natural rights republic, Thomas West has made an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of American political thought. He shows that the founders’ republicanism is a part of their liberalism; that duties and rights, properly understood, are not at odds. In doing so, The Political Theory of the American Founding not only helps us better understand America’s principles, it explains why we ought to cherish them and fight to restore them to their rightful place in our political life.

• Roundtable on The Political Theory of the American Founding: Natural Rights, Public Policy, and the Moral Conditions of Freedom by Thomas G. West. Hillsdale College. 09/19/17. [Video]
• Making Sense of the Founders: Politics, Natural Rights, and the Laws of Nature by Justin Dyer. Public Discourse> 06/09/17.

  [West argues] that the founders did in fact share a “theoretically coherent understanding” of politics rooted in natural rights philosophy. Other traditions were of course present, but the founders, West insists, embraced these other traditions in their official public documents and pronouncements only to the extent that those traditions could be enlisted as allies of the natural rights philosophy. When natural rights conflicted with elements of the common law, customary practices, or religious tradition, it was the natural rights tradition that won the day. Public documents and the affairs of state—rather than sermons, commentaries, private letters, or other musings—“point to natural rights and the laws of nature as the lens through which politics is understood.”[...]

  The Political Theory of the American Founding does a wonderful job of correcting some of the caricatures of the political thought of eighteenth-century Americans as amoral, areligious, individualistic, or otherwise hostile to public virtue and the moral conditions of freedom. The key, for West, is recognizing that the founders distinguished the purpose of politics (securing rights) from the purpose of life (happiness), and the founders created a society that remained open to the private pursuit of nobility, wisdom, piety, and the higher goods that were supposedly sublimated by the founders into the base pursuit of material gain.

  Throughout, West leaves open the question whether the founders’ philosophy is true. I venture a preliminary answer: yes, for the most part, but only because they were buoyed by those other traditions—notably Christianity, the common law, and elements of classical theological natural law—and thereby built better than they knew.