ABSTRACT
The current fashions of deconstruction and reception theory remind us that books do not belong to their authors but to their readers. For Main, ideology, by which Merrill Jensen seems to mean political ideas, is merely one of the "factors" or "forces" that influence behavior. Other such "forces" that influence human behavior during the Revolutionary era are social class, economic interests, residence, personal ambition, and so on. There are times, of course, when the struggle over meanings is especially intense and vigorous, when society and politics are changing rapidly and people are hard put to find meanings to make sense of their behavior. How America moved into this liberal world of business, money-making, and the open promotion of interests is a question that concerns not only several of these essayists but many other historians also. This liberal world was not something foisted on America by few rich merchants and eastern aristocrats, nor was it something simply created by the Constitution.
