s of English-speaking peoples to the "peculiar political genius of the Germanic races" (Beard, 1941, p. 2). Once again, this school of interpretation is echoed by the current U.S. administration, perhaps most notably in its rationale for its 2003 war in Iraq. There, the administration used the justification of bringing democracy to the Middle East as one of its reasons for invading a sovereign nation. Notably, the democracy the U.S. Administration advocated for the Middle East is based firmly on American democracy, which many argue (and which Beard's analysis supports) is a capitalist democracy based firmly on economic interests.
The third school of interpretation Beard characterizes by a lack of hypotheses (Beard, 1941, p. 3). It is a more self-critical school than the others because it is aware of the problems of trying to read history through a pre-determined prism, a feature this school criticized in the two that preceded it. Although Beard places his own economic interpretation outside any of the three schools, an argument could certainly be made this his interpretation fits into this school. Beard's analysis is not necessarily self-critical. It does, however, examine the motives that lay under the Framers' political positions to criticize the historical assumptions reached by the other two schools.
Thus, Beard argues that the third school of interpretation has provided the best American critical historical scholarship even as it fails to explain the causes of historical events. In particular, he argues that no school of interpretation has explored beyond the traditional state versus state and North-South dichotomies that have characterized and guided American historical scholarship. He contends that this is a failing, arguing that the economic underpinnings of American society have always played a greater role in its political history than have regional relationships (Beard, 1941, p. 6).
The significance of Beard...