Peter Berkowitz of Hoover examines the import - and ignorance - of The Federalist Papers.
"In the misguided quest to mold political science to the shape of
the natural sciences, many scholars disdainfully dismiss The Federalist—indeed,
all works of ideas—as mere journalism or literary studies which, lacking
scientific rigor, can't yield genuine knowledge....By robbing students of the chance to acquire a truly liberal
education, our universities also deprive the nation of a citizenry
well-acquainted with our Constitution's enduring principles."
This "scientistic" attitude is the long-range result of philosophy's abdication from epistemology, which has left us bereft of tools to clearly determine when we know something from observation, inference, and deduction.
The fact that many law schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Berkeley, do not include these works in their course of study is appalling, but explains the way far too many lawyers are willing to run roughshod over the Constitution.
The Federalist should be taught in high school as well as college, along with so many other original documents of American history and politics that have been replaced by leftist revisionism, such as Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States.
