The President of the United States by Woodrow Wilson

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Essay #76 – The President of the United States by Woodrow Wilson

Daily Essay 2013, Joerg W. Knipprath 1. The Federalist Papers, 4. The Classics that Inspired the Constitution, 13. Guest Constitutional Scholar Essayists, Federalist No. 51, Joerg W. Knipprath, The Constitution of the United States of America, The President of the United States by Woodrow Wilson

Guest Essayist: Professor Joerg Knipprath, Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School

Thomas Woodrow Wilson was dour, humorless, and convinced of the fallen nature of all but the elect few and of the need for strong leaders with proper principles who would provide the discipline and vision for the moral guidance of the weak at home and abroad. Calvinist in appearance, outlook, and family background, he perfectly matched the caricature of a Puritan. Those traits also made him a perfect Progressive.

Wilson was strongly influenced by 19^th century German intellectual thought, especially Hegel’s views of the State as the evolutionary path of an Idea through history, and by contemporary adaptations of Darwinian theories to social science. He enthusiastically embraced the nascent ideology of the State. Read more

June 3, 2013/1 Comment/by Janine Turner and Cathy Gillespie

The President of the United States by Woodrow Wilson – Reprinted from The U.S. Constitution, A Reader, Published by Hillsdale College

Classics that Inspired the Constitution, Daily Reading 2013, The Original Documents, The President of the United States by Woodrow Wilson 4. The Classics that Inspired the Constitution, The President of the United States by Woodrow Wilson

For Wilson, constitutional checks and balances and the separation of powers are indicative of the flawed thinking of America’s Founders. They are means of limiting government, when the fact is that government alone can provide the people’s needs. Wilson looks to the presidency–the singular voice of the people–as the best hope for overcoming the old order.

1908

It is difficult to describe any single part of a great governmental system without describing the whole of it. Governments are living things and operate as organic wholes. Moreover, governments have their natural evolution and are one thing in one age, another in another. The makers of the Constitution constructed the federal government upon a theory of checks and balances which was meant to limit the operation of each part and allow to no single part or organ of it a dominating force; but no government can be successfully conducted upon so mechanical a theory. Read more

June 3, 2013/0 Comments/by Janine Turner and Cathy Gillespie