ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the Constitution historically and critically as a force that both shapes and is shaped by a political culture with certain recognizable continuities, but undergoing constant and sometimes rapid, even explosive, change. As Sheldon Wolin argues, the Constitution is simultaneously a political and an interpretive event; what the Framers agreed to was the text's content, not its meaning. It is important to remember that the United States has existed under two constitutions rather than one. The debates over ratification were conducted in a mixture of theoretical vocabularies, including not just liberalism and civic humanism, but also the much secularized residue of Puritanism and, lest we forget, a modernist, state-building theory as well. The republican theory has been a useful stimulant, but the concept of republicanism simply cannot replace liberalism as an organizational theme for the interpretation of American thought and history.
