The Frozen Republic

by Daniel Lazare

America is caught in a painful contradiction. On one hand its government is based on the revered words of the Founding Fathers, fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a new constitution for a new republic. On the other hand its government is in crisis. Confidence is collapsing in everything from Congress and the presidency to the local courts. Yet rather than asking whether the Constitution is a factor in the breakdown, Americans blame their representatives in Washington, the press, or even themselves - everyone and anyone except the men who created the government in the first place. In this bold new book Daniel Lazare argues that in fact the Founders have a great deal to answer for. Fearing that unhampered majority rule would lead to tyranny, they devised a system that would scatter power rather than concentrate it. The fear that indebted farmers would seize control of the new government, James Madison conceded, led the Constitutional Convention to create a syste