Study Habits

One thing I've learned is that in order for me to learn information I have to really get a good grasp of the material. I can't just memorize things; I have to understand the big picture and synthesize information somehow.

Ann G. Serow and Everett C. Ladd compiled an excellent book called The Lanahan Readings in the American Polity. It sounds boring, and in some cases it is. It is, however, a required reading for AP Government. I'm going to organize kind of what I get out of it so far in today's readings.

We have to read four excerpts for tomorrow:

1. #8 - Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition
2. #10 - Michael Kammen's A Machine That Would Go of Itself
   
3. #9 - James Madison's The Federalist 10
   
4. #15 - James Madison's The Federalist 51

1. To me it seems that Hofstadter's driving impetus in this essay is his view of the Founding Fathers as attempting to create a government that is based on the view of the masses while at the same time distrusting those same masses. The Founding Fathers viewed man as a "rapacious self-interest, and yet they wanted him to be free". In subscribing to this philosophy, the Fathers stood in the middle of two extremes. It reminds me of Hartz's essay (although written seven years earlier), and Michael Kammen later capitalized on this same idea in 1972. That is, the idea of paradoxes in government. How can a government be derived from the people and the liberties they innately have, but be at the same time be ordained to control the inordinate self-interest of the people? Hofstadter argues that the Founding Fathers thought that democracy was the most menacing thing to liberty; that is, the ability to own property, to protect that property, and bestow upon every man the same liberties as another to do with that property what he will, dependent upon his own inpinging upon the rights of others. It is only when combined with Locke's view of property that we received our inalienable rights guaranteed by the Constitution today. I enjoyed when Hofstadter brought up the point that, "it was the opponents of the Constitution who were most active in demanding such vital liberties as freedom of religion, freedom of speech..." In the end, the Founding Fathers, according to Hofstadter, established the government to effectively umpire their continual strife with property, because they agreed with Hobbes that mankind is inherently brutish. However, in order to control that brutish nature they necessarily had to place the nature of man against itself to keep one party from gaining too much control.

I had planned to write more on each of the essays, but I'm afraid I'm out of time. Until next time, this is S. Fisher, signing off.