A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture

by Kammen,Michael

• ISBN13: 9781412805834
• ISBN10: 141280583X
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-11-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen examines the cultural impact of the Constitution on the United States, explores the Constitution’s place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life from ratification in 1788 to our own time, and expounds on what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence for our American "Ark of the Covenant," most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution.

Author Biography

Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition	xi
List of Illustrations	ix
Forethoughts	xvii
Acknowledgments	xxvii
1 The Problem of Constitutionalism in American Culture	3	(40)
PART ONE The Most Wonderful Instrument Ever Drawn by the Hand of Man
2 To Make the Constitution a Practical System	43	(25)
3 All That Gives Us a National Character	68	(27)
4 The Constitution Threatens to Be a Subject of Infinite Sects	95	(32)
PART TWO A Machine That Would Go of Itself
5 On This Day, One Hundred Years Ago	127	(29)
6 The American and the British Constitution Are Two Entirely Different Things	156	(29)
7 The Crisis in Constitutionalism	185	(34)
PART THREE America Is Always Talking About Its Constitution
8 God Knows How Dearly We Need a Constitutional Revival	219	(36)
9 Decisions ilre Politics When Constitutional Questions Are Up for Decision	255	(27)
10 My God! Making a Racket out of the Constitution	282	(33)
PART FOUR The Pendulum of Public Opinion
11 Illegal Defiance of Constitutional Authority	315	(21)
12 Our Bill of Rights Is Under Subtle and Pervasive Attack	336	(21)
13 The Public Got Strange and Distorted Views of the Court and Its Rulings	357	(24)
14 It's What Holds Us All Together	381	(22)
Appendix A A Note on the Sources	403	(2)
Appendix B A Supplementary Note on Iconography	405	(2)
Appendix C "A Constitution for the New Deal," by H.L. Mencken	407	(4)
Abbreviations	411	(2)
Notes Index	413	(96)
Index	509