Jill Lepore: belief

Transcript context

…If we go back to the 18th century, there’s Abbe Raynal from France, the philosopher George Berkeley from Ireland, arguably Jefferson: They think America will blossom as the new Athens and actually do so fairly soon. At best, they were 100 years too early with their forecast for when it would happen, arguably more. What variable do you think they mis-estimated? Why were they so overly optimistic about the arts and letters in what was to become the United States? There’s much more alcoholism than they expected, more hooliganism, arguably more stupidity, badly polarized politics, and more violence. What was wrong with their model of this country, or country-to-be? That’s an interesting question. I think that the flourishing that they anticipated rested on a misunderstanding of the basic premise of republican government as it was set up in the 18th century. They did not see what we would now think of as the original sin of the Constitution, the three-fifths clause and the continuation of slavery and that constitutional sanctioning of the institution, and could not see how the kind of decay that that would lead to in what was erected as this kind of shining city on a hill version of republicanism. That the first century of American history is engaged domestically, almost entirely with the struggle over that question. Every step westward that Americans make, is a step deeper into that problem. Right.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.