Clinton Rossiter Quotes

Hamilton was not the master builder of the Constitution: the laurels surely go to James Madison. He was, however, its foremost interpreter, starting with The Federalist and continuing with his Treasury tenure, when he had to expound constitutional doctrines to accomplish his goals. He lived, in theory and practice, every syllable of the Constitution. For that reason, historian Clinton Rossiter insisted that Hamilton’s “works and words have been more consequential than those of any other American in shaping the Constitution under which we live.

It is a disposition that the historian Clinton Rossiter described simply but insightfully, writing when the right was at its turning point in the 1950s and 1960s. Conservatives, he said, have the obligation to “steer a prudent course between too much progress, which throws us into turmoil, and too little, which is an impossible state for Americans to endure.” Rossiter viewed conservatism’s “highest mission” as fostering “the spirit of unity among . . . all classes and callings” in the name of “preserving a successful way of life.

Political scientist Clinton Rossiter, considered one of the first neoconservatives, answered this question head-on, and unlike his peers, honestly, in his early study Conservatism in America, stating correctly that America’s political roots were “progressive” and the United States was conceived out of “a Liberal tradition.

For that reason, historian Clinton Rossiter insisted that Hamilton’s “works and words have been more consequential than those of any other American in shaping the Constitution under which we live.