Customer Reviews (1)

She should've narrowed her thesis a little...
Ms. Wiltshire attempts a lot in this book -- to trace the theme of personal rights over 2000 years of history from ancient Greece and Rome through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and into colonial America, culminating in the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution.The nature of the task and the size of the book make more than a cursory attempt at a historical lineage impossible.Nevertheless, Ms. Wiltshire has provided some introductory framework for the discussion.

Some portions of the book (particularly her discussion of the ninth and tenth amendments and her attempt to paint the Apostle Paul as a natural law theorist) are contrived.

I thought the book was a reasonable introduction to the subject until I read her conclusion and a separate essay she wrote on the book, in which she stated that her purpose in writing was to place the origin of the bill of rights in a classical, as opposed to a Judeo-Christian, context.While I would agree with her that the typical fundamentalist exaggerates when he paints the framers of the Constitution as almost entirely orthodox Christians, I would disagree with her conclusion that Christianity was not a primary influence.For a better treatment of this view, read Forrest McDonald's "Novus Ordo Seclorum:Intellectual Origins of the Constitution," where he concludes that it is futile to say with any dogmatism that the "founding fathers thought," or "the founding fathers intended," because the framers of the Constitution were a diverse group with diverse backgrounds and interests. ... Read more