Book Presentation

If American colonists had not rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, then America as an independent nation would not exist. The Constitutional Convention vigorously debated whether Americashould even have a standing army as the founders understood this could drain resources and create too much of a temptation for political leaders to use it. Those worries ultimately led to the Constitution’s division of government with a deliberate bias towards peace rather than war.

However, in the past generation or two, America has drifted from that historical course. Instead of war being an occasional necessity, we’ve grown accustomed to our nation continually fighting a war or two somewhere in the world. Even worse, in recent years a larger proportion of the military operations sanctioned by the United States have been carried out by private contractors driven by the profit motive rather than the US military executing the policy of our elected leaders. In doing so, we’ve broken faith with the best advice and guidance our founders gave us.

It’s time for a course correction and for the United States to return to our constitutional roots. We need to revive the idea that America is a peaceable nation and we will only result to war when exceptional circumstances arise. “It’s not a conspiracy, there aren’t rogue elements pushing us to subvert our national interests to instead serve theirs. It’s been more entertaining and more boneheaded than that. The good news is we don’t need a radical new vision of post–Cold War American power. We just need a “small c” conservative return to our constitutional roots, a course correction. It wasn’t inevitable. And it’s fixable.”

– James Madison

Rachel Maddow is the host of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. She previously worked at Air America Radio. She has a doctorate in politics from Oxford and a bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford.

This is a summary and not a critique or a review of the book. It does not offer judgment or opinion on the content of the book.  This summary may not be organized chapter-wise but is an overview of the main ideas, viewpoints and arguments from the book as a whole. This means that the organization of this summary is not a representation of the book.