The Constitution as Unifier

In a time of significant cultural and intellectual divides, Bradford Wilson, associate director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, sends word of his Constitution Day Address (PDF). Here's a short excerpt of the address, which was delivered earlier this month,

"I see in the restoration of the study of liberal constitutionalism exemplified by the Constitution of the United States the only realistic path back to a truly liberating education. For it is through that study that we recover the American principles of public right that stand as stumbling blocks to the postmodernist ethos which has taken over the humanities and much of the social sciences. A new attention to the American Founding, and to the Western philosophical and religious traditions without which the new American nation could not have been imagined, is an antidote to the relativism, nihilism, and identity politics that have effectively closed the doors to Plato’s Academy.

"Questions that are perennial features of the human condition – the questions of how we should live, of the relationship between one’s status as a human being like other human beings and one’s status as a citizen of a particular political order, of the nature of the human and of the divine – these questions are no longer evident in the life of most American universities. If a student seriously engages these questions, particularly by grappling with the profound works of the Western tradition, it is a stroke of great good fortune rather than a consequence of institutional intent and design."

Brad's concerns echo those voiced by Wilfred McClay last week. Dan Rather might want to enroll in a refresher course.