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What Does the Constitution Really Mean?Are liberals right when they cite the ?elastic" clauses of the Constitution to justify big government? Or are conservatives right when they cite the Constitution's explicit limits on federal power? The answer lies in a more basic question: How did the founding generation intend for us to interpret and apply the Constitution? Professor Brion McClanahan, popular author of The Politically Incorrect Guide™ to the Founding Fathers, finds the answers by going directly to the source?to the Founding Fathers themselves, who debated all t

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Terminology -- Introduction: Thinking with Catholicism, Empire, and History -- 1. Making a Founding Father out of a French Jesuit -- 2. Imagining Peaceful Conquest -- 3. Making Parallel Histories out of Spanish Missions -- 4. Embodying Hospitality and Paternalism -- 5. Revising and Rejecting Antifriarism -- 6. Envisioning Catholic Colonial Order -- Conclusion: Imperial Church Stories -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Making a Founding Father out of a French Jesuit -- Imagining Peaceful Conquest -- Making Parallel Histories out of Spanish Missions -- Embodying Hospitality and Paternalism -- Revising and Rejecting Anti-Friarism -- Envisioning Catholic Colonial Order -- Conclusion : Imperial Church Stories.

Introduction -- Aristotle and Locke in the American founding -- Equality, liberty, wisdom, morality, and consent in the idea of political freedom -- Humanizing certitudes and impoverishing doubts : a critique of The closing of the American mind by Allan Bloom -- "The Reichstag is still burning : the failure of higher education and the decline of the West" : a valedictory lecture -- The end of history means the end of freedom -- The American founding as the best regime : the bonding of civil and religious liberty -- The decline and fall of the American idea : reflections on the failure of American conservatism -- Thomas Aquinas meets Thomas Jefferson -- Dred Scott revisited -- Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Founding Fathers have enjoyed a revival of interest in recent years, due in part to the publication of a number of splendid biographies of various founders. After providing a survey of the primary religious groups in late colonial America, Holmes turns his attention to the religious views of several of the most prominent members of the founding generation, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.