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Frequently invoked as the source of modern democracy, the American Constitution
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Warren Winter 1/9/03 US History I Honors "The Constitution was a carefully crafted charade constructed to obfuscate the true nature of power and politics in the Republic." The framers of the American Constitution espoused the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and the religion of John Calvin; these ideological dispositions strongly influenced the purpose of the Constitution. The Hobbesian view of man as an inherently selfish creature and the strong Calvinistic belief in the wickedness of man synthesize into an acutely cynical distrust of the unchecked common man. Frequently invoked as the source of American democracy, the Constitution in its entirety is the converse: It is an essentially conservative device for the maintenance of the status of the gentry. The progressive historian Richard Hofstadter asserts in The American Political Tradition that democratic ideas lack appeal in the burgeoning privileged class (7). The members of the Constitutional Convention were, for the most part, privileged and affluent....
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