Helena Rosenblatt

I've become more and more interested in American political thought and institutions and history.

Unfortunately, because of the way disciplines and concentrations work, I'm more of an expert on European history.

But what I've read about the founding and about the founding fathers and what was going on there just fills me with enormous respect and gratitude.

And I think for the wonderful work that they did, being both

thinkers and actors.

And Franklin Jefferson came to Paris and were very much interested also in French matters and vice versa.

The American Constitution influenced early liberals because they thought it was an amazing document.

And maybe that's the thing that's so wonderful is to see exactly those things coming together, the ideas and the practices coming together in the founding fathers to produce this amazing document.

Well, I don't mean to, again, idealize these out of proportion, these people, these early liberals and liberals have never been perfect.

They're often suffer from the same prejudices, the prejudices of their time.

There are exclusions.

How did they grapple with this?

I think there were, I mean, other people can speak more intelligently about the U.S.

Constitution and the position, the slavery within the document and say that this is really a question also of compromise.

It's a horrible thing to imagine, but I think there was debates going on there and politics.

politics going on that are unseemly today.

And you have John Stuart Mill seeing absolutely atrocious things about how despotism is okay when you're dealing with barbarians or something, talking about British imperialism in India.

You have Tocqueville, who was okay, apparently, with burning silos

In Algeria, that's awful stuff.

But at the same time, these people were then from within.