Fresia's American Empire Thesis: A Critical Analysis
This paper critically evaluates Jerry Fresia's argument, presented in Toward an American Revolution (1988), that the United States failed to fulfill its democratic promise because the Constitution was designed by and for a plutocratic elite. The paper engages with Fresia's claims across two main areas: first, whether the Constitution structurally prevents meaningful democratic participation by the majority; and second, whether America's domestic and foreign conduct demonstrates a pattern of imperialism from the colonial period through the twentieth century. The analysis acknowledges some merit in Fresia's historical evidence while challenging his conclusions about constitutional reform, the two-party system, American imperialism's effect on the poor, and his proposed extra-constitutional remedies.
- Introduction: Fresia's Democratic Failure Thesis: Overview of Fresia's plutocratic elite argument
- The Constitution, Wealth, and Democratic Participation: Constitution's evolution beyond founders' original intent
- Electoral Politics and the Two-Party System: Voter agency, third parties, and systemic constraints
- American Imperialism and the Condition of the Poor: Imperialism's paradoxical benefit to America's poor
- Empire as Freedom: Fresia's Historical Evidence: Fresia's claim that founding freedom meant elite control
- Slavery, Black Codes, and Domestic Oppression: Slavery's expansion and post-Civil War re-enslavement
- Foreign Policy, Nazi Collaboration, and Continual War: U.S. foreign interventions as evidence of empire
- Conclusion: Extra-constitutional activism and communism compared
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper maintains a consistent critical stance throughout, neither dismissing Fresia entirely nor accepting his argument uncritically — it identifies where historical evidence supports Fresia and where his logic overreaches.
- Concrete historical examples (poll taxes, Jim Crow literacy tests, the Perot and Nader campaigns, Nazi collaboration) ground abstract claims about democracy and empire in verifiable events.
- The paper addresses each of Fresia's major claims in sequence, creating a logical, point-by-point rebuttal structure that is easy to follow.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates critical source engagement: it summarizes Fresia's thesis accurately and charitably before identifying specific logical gaps — particularly the failure to connect wealth concentration to voter disempowerment, and the failure to account for constitutional evolution over time. This technique shows evaluative rather than merely descriptive reading.
Structure breakdown
The paper is divided into two numbered responses. The first critiques Fresia's constitutional and electoral arguments across four paragraphs, moving from the founding elite's intentions, to voter participation, to the two-party system, to imperialism's effect on the poor, and finally to extra-constitutional activism. The second section summarizes and evaluates Fresia's evidence for America-as-empire chronologically: colonial treatment of Native Americans, slavery, Reconstruction-era Black Codes, WWII collaboration with Nazi Germany, domestic experimentation, and foreign military involvement in Latin America.
Introduction: Fresia's Democratic Failure Thesis
While Fresia's contention that the United States failed to live up to its revolutionary democratic promise — and was instead captured by a powerful plutocratic elite — has appeal, it oversimplifies the process by which elites take and retain control over resources and governmental power. In reality, at the time of the American Revolution, there was little dispute that the outcome of the Revolution would be to give greater power and freedom to those leading it: the founding fathers. While the promise of democracy was offered to common men, it was members of the ruling elite of colonial America who made the decisions to declare independence from England and who drafted both the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. It is therefore unsurprising that the Constitution does not engage in the type of wealth redistribution that Fresia appears to believe is necessary to establish a true democracy. For example, had the Constitution not prohibited interference with contracts, states would have had the power to erase obligations from debtor to creditor, thereby redistributing resources among Americans.
The Constitution, Wealth, and Democratic Participation
However compelling Fresia's argument appears on the surface, it fails to make the necessary connection between the disproportionate concentration of wealth in the United States and the failure of the common man to have a real voice in national politics. Fresia concentrates on issues such as voter registration requirements to prove his thesis that the poor majority are actively discouraged from voting. There is historical truth to those statements, as demonstrated by the poll taxes and literacy requirements used to hamper Black voter registration in the Jim Crow South. However, the history of the world — not simply the United States — demonstrates a persistent pattern of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual bias. The problem did not begin with the United States Constitution, nor was the Constitution drafted in order to remedy it.
In fact, the issues of sexual and racial discrimination, which appear so obvious and indefensible in modern light, were not viewed in the same manner during Revolutionary times. To illustrate this point, one need only note that during Revolutionary times, Africans actively participated in the slave trade to the same extent as Europeans and Americans. Neither indentured servitude nor slavery were viewed with the same level of contempt they receive in the modern world. Fresia ignores the fact that the Constitution, regardless of the intentions of the founding fathers, has evolved along with the world's changing conception of human rights. Initially, the constitutional protection that no citizen be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law protected slaveholders from losing their human chattel. Today, those same words protect the descendants of slaves from being unlawfully deprived of their life, liberty, or property. The fact that the founding fathers never intended for the Constitution to protect certain groups of people does not deprive the instrument of its power to do so.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.