A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty

When political debates devolve, as they often do these days, into a contest between big-government progressivism and natural rights individualism, Americans tend to appeal to the “self-evident” truths inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But Peter Lawler and Richard Reinsch remind us that these truths understood in the abstract are untethered from a prior, unwritten constitution presupposed by the Framers—one found in culture, customs, traditions, experiences, ...