Sponsored by Blue Grass Motorsport.
Our idea of the Founders’ America and its values is not
true. We are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of
Reconstruction and its vision for equality.
There’s a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a
country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the
Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country
increasingly divided, this story isn’t working for us anymore—what’s more, it’s
not even true. As Kermit Roosevelt argues in this eye-opening reinterpretation
of the American story, our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not
part of the vision of the Founders. Instead, they were stated in Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address and were the hope of Reconstruction, when it was possible to
envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.
We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the
racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we
want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was,
Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we’re not the
country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a
fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern
Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and
destroyed that political order. This alternate understanding of American
identity opens the door to a new understanding of ourselves and our story, and
ultimately to a better America.
America today is not the Founders’ America, but it can be Lincoln’s America.
Roosevelt offers a powerful and inspirational rethinking of our country’s
history and uncovers a shared past that we can be proud to claim and use as a
foundation to work toward a country that fully embodies equality for all.
Kermit Roosevelt III is a professor of
constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. A former law
clerk to Supreme Court Justice David Souter, he is the author of The
Myth of Judicial Activism, as well as two novels, Allegiance and In
the Shadow of the Law.