Dennis C. Rasmussen is professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. His books include The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought and Fears of a Setting Sun. He lives in Cazenovia, New York.
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Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, pa... SEE MORE