Fears of a Setting Sun, Dennis C. Rasmussen
Fears of a Setting Sun, Dennis C. Rasmussen
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Fears of a Setting Sun
The Disillusionment of America's Founders

Author: Dennis C. Rasmussen

Narrator: Keith Sellon-Wright

Unabridged: 9 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/02/2021


Synopsis

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, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them—including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders' disillusionment.

As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders' pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America's political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America's constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not.

About Dennis C. Rasmussen

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by William on March 11, 2021

Thumps Up on the Founders' Downers! Fears of a Setting Sun” is way more than a half-full look at some half-empty, despairing Founders' glasses. Speaking of glasses, I see the book focusing on information usually hidden to those having read earlier Founding histories with rose-colored glasses. For thi......more

Goodreads review by Aloysius on May 13, 2021

Partisanship. Corruption. Weak government. Sectional division. Modern day Americans worry about these and other issues now, but these concerns were alive and well during the founding generation. Contrary to popular belief, the Founding Fathers were men of flesh, not marble, and at various times over......more

Goodreads review by Greg on June 05, 2022

While I am not sure that it is reassuring to us in our own democracy-endangered times, it is enlightening to learn of how many of those we consider the Founders had serious reservations as they aged about the Republic to which they had given form. After all, if these good and wise men had doubts, th......more

Goodreads review by Kyle on June 03, 2024

A fascinating analysis on a few of the founders’ thoughts on the evolution of the American government over the course of their lives and how many became disillusioned by its future prospects; given the examination was primarily driven by the letters the founders wrote, the book also showed that the......more