As Far As Republican Principles Will Admit

A posthumous collection of Martin Diamond’s essays on the American founding, edited by William A. Schambra and published by the AEI Press. Diamond’s characteristic claim — against the Progressive historians who read the Constitution as a retreat from the Declaration — is that the Framers were solving a genuinely republican problem: how to build institutions that would check majority faction while remaining answerable to the majority. The title is Madison’s phrase from Federalist.

Why it’s on the list: The American Experiment sub-section reads the founding through its own documents and then through its interpreters; Diamond is the interpreter who insists the founders’ republicanism was a solution rather than a compromise.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on The American Experiment. Shared on X on March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 211-entry transcription, with the four parts and sixteen sub-sections, is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this card came from.
• Democracy — the founding’s design problem as Diamond reconstructs it.
• Institutions — the level at which he thinks the founders’ answer lives.