Review: 'Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future'

It is a common habit of progressives to denounce various aspects of American history as racist, sexist, or in some other way bigoted. The U.S. Constitution, we are often reminded, had a “three-fifths clause” that counted blacks as less than whites—for purposes of congressional representation. The clause, rightly, is denounced as a stain on our founding charter. The missing context, however, is that it was the abolitionists who did not want blacks to be counted at all, while the slaveholders wanted them to be counted in full, so as to give the slaveholding South more political representation and power. The progressive historian Charles Beard launched a new front, arguing that the Constitution was drafted to protect the wealth and property of the people who wrote it. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Forrest McDonald and others debunked Beard’s shoddy and polemical history. Another oft-heard gripe is that the franchise wasn’t granted to everyone overnight. Women couldn’t vote for a century or more, and non–property holding men had to wait a while as well, though not as long. Read Full Article »