Historical Lenses Discussion PDF

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Summary

Initial post for a discussion board on historical lenses...

Description

Publius and Persuasion: Rhetorical Readings of The Federalist Papers is the secondary source I used for this week’s discussion post. According to John Fiske, The Federalist Papers were, as he described in his book, The Critical Period in American History, “perhaps the most famous of American books, and undoubtedly the most profound and suggestive treatise on government that has ever been written.” It is ironic that we are reading about a historical event (urging the people of New York to ratify the newly drafted U.S. Constitution) then reading a source that was talking about The Federalist Papers through the Political Science lens while looking at this (clarification needed...what is the this you refer to...The Ratification?) through the lens of History. At first, I wasn’t entirely sure which lens was being used until I reached this, “Perhaps the most partisan use of The Federalist has occurred during impeachment proceedings, in which both accusers and defenders have made ready use of the relevant numbers. So frequent were such references during the impeachment of President Clinton, that popular media sources ran stories on The Federalist, while legal experts and political pundits scrambled for copies of the “venerable” text.” At that moment I realized that there was no other lens that made sense to look at this with than the Political Science lens. Political Science is defined as the branch of knowledge that deals with systems of government; the analysis of political activity and behavior. That is exactly what Publius and Persuasion: Rhetorical Readings of The Federalist Papers and The Federalist Papers do. Many are unaware that our current constitution is our second, or that in the four years following the end of the revolutionary war and the ratifying of the U.S. Constitution we were governed by The Articles of Confederation! Our founding fathers drafted the current constitution at the constitutional convention in the search for a more perfect union....