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The most significant contribution of Professor Lienesch's stimulating article, in my view, lies in its concept that the constitutional tradition in America was a product of deliberate manufacture. Some parts of the idea have been around for a considerable time; as early as 1950, for instance, Merrill Jensen exploded John Fiske's “critical period” interpretation of the 1780's and showed that the supposed calamitous quality of the years before the writing of the Constitution was a fictional creation of Federalist myth-makers. But most of Lienesch's study is original, and sheds light on a central problem in the evolution of republican societies, the process by which agreed-upon and necessary myths are developed. |
