'Constitutional Reverence or Democratic Faith?' to be topic
The second event of Skidmore's annual Constitution Day Lecture Series will be a talk titled "Constitutional Reverence or Democratic Faith?" by Carl Scott, visiting assistant professor of government.
The lecture will begin at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 14,in the Pohndorff Reading Room of Scribner Library (third floor). A reception will follow. Scott's lecture will discuss two competing concepts of the American political creed, one favored by James Madison and the other by Herbert Croly.
In Federalist #49 , James Madison argued that the relative difficulty of amending the U.S. Constitution would strengthen America's republican government, as it would encourage a natural reverence for the Constitution over the long run. Herbert Croly, a leading progressive thinker (and the founding editor of The New Republic), attacked this sort of reverence in his 1912 book Progressive Democracy, arguing that it had led Americans to bow before a veritable "monarchy of the Word." Reverence for the Constitution, he argued, not only blocked needed reforms, but hindered a questing faith in democracy more natural to the American spirit. Scott will revisit this fundamental debate about the proper "political creed" for America with a view to better understand the Constitution and how attitudes toward it continue to shape our present political divisions.
Scott comes to Skidmore from appointments at the University of Virginia and Hampton-Sydney College. His interests include Plato, French political philosophy, and American political thought. He is currently working on a book manuscript on Plato and Tocqueville's conceptions of the democratic character.
