Negative Positive
Title: A cultic view.
Review: West is a devotee of Straussianism, that anti-historical school of Founders-worship whose influence is so slight among historians while its voice, thanks to wealthy right-wingers' subsidies (such as through the Heritage Foundation), is so loud. Thus, for example, he assumes throughout that the Constitution somehow is related to the Declaration. Just read Madison's notes on the debates in the Philadelphia Convention and see how often the Framers (note: not the same as the Founders, _pace_ West) mentioned living up to the Declaration. The Ratifiers, the Founders whose views count on this score, cared about this idea even less. This is a lame book: the few men whose works West has combed are unrepresentative of their times (he ignores Clinton, Henry, R.H. Lee, _et al._), yet even their own lives don't verify his arguments. If you want to learn something about the origins of the U.S. constitution, start with Bernard Bailyn or Gordon Wood -- who don't get by on right-wing subventions.
Is the review positive or negative? 