By going back to the origins of American political thought – from the War of Independence to the 1800 Revolution – Dick Howard shows us that this thought is rooted in a unique history in which theory is constantly confronted with practice.
To do this, he takes a new look at the founding events of American history in order to show how they were lived and understood, and how they produced specific schools of thought and institutions. The problem that Americans had to face in their struggle against England was that they were unwilling or unable to use the political tools in vigour in the country from which they came. Thus necessity was the mother of the invention of something else.

Experience preceded theory and fashioned it. But thought came along and criticised what had been lived through and established… Soon enough, for example, the question arose, of how to respect the democratic ideal of majority rules, while restraining it to prevent hotheads from threatening the common good. Along the same lines, would the representative system require rethinking, once it was no longer (and this was a first), based on ancient orders? What was the best way to get from the representation of values to judging conflicting interests?
The pragmatic American approach lead to the birth of a democratic Republic, that aimed to temper the expression of popular will via the res publica’s formal and procedural requirements, and, inversely, regulate politic will through democratic debate.  It is against the benchmark of this figure of political judgement invented by the newly born United States that the much-needed critique of its action in today’s world is most pertinent.