…got some new material simmering… but I’ve been hiding in the library shelves the last week, otherwise trying to get some real world work done. Here’s a useful fragment for later use the next time we feel like discussing constitutionalism, from the historian Forrest McDonald:
It should be obvious… that it is meaningless to say that the Framers intended this or that; …their positions were diverse and, in many particulars, incompatible. Some had firm, well-rounded plans, some had strong convictions on only a few points; some had self-contradictory ideas; some were guided only by vague ideals.
Isaac Kramnick concurs. Referring to the various “distinguishable idioms” in the discourse of 1787 – “republicanism,” “Lockean liberalism,” “work-ethic Protestantism,” and “state-centered theories of power and sovereignty” – he offers the following caution to those seeking some overarching version of “original intent” (emphasis in the original) :
None dominated the field, and the use of one [idiom] was compatible with the use of another by the very same writer or speaker. There was a profusion and confusion of political tongues among the founders. They lived easily with that clatter; it is we two hundred years later who chafe at their inconsistency.
[amazon-product]0700611088[/amazon-product]The above quotes come from the introduction to Jerome Huyler’s Locke in America (1995), which attempts to synthesize apparent contradictions through a proper understanding of Locke’s work and influence. I’ll close for now with another historian’s promise to find order among these contradictions – from Gordon Wood, describing what the Framers of 1787 expected in exchange for their rejection of the ancient republican virtues embodied in the “Spirit of 1776”:
The illimitable progress of mankind promised by the Enlightenment could at last be made coincident with the history of a single nation. For the Americans at least, and for others if they followed, the endless cycle of history could finally be broken.
). Go to our 
For the Americans at least, and for others if they followed, the endless cycle of history could finally be broken.
This sounds very much like Hinduism where the endless cycles of Karma are occasionally broken by an Enlighted Being after countless generations of reincarnation.
Let’s not kid ourselves here,the endless cycle of history is no more broken by US then the everpresent karmic process ever could be.
Humanity’s illusions,delusions,pride,and hybris are the engine of history. American Exceptionalism as described above by Wood is another variant of nationalistic hybris. James Joyce’s opinion was that history is a nightmare from which we haven’t woken. We’re not “Special” by any Standard in the sense of Destiny or Divine intention. If we are going to salvage our empire,or our nation,(we have to choose which)we have to do that with our Reason and Intelligence, not some fantasy of Predestination,Divine Right or Manifest Destiny.