<< Doesn't anyone remember
Charles A. Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
(1913), which presented a strong argument that the Constitution was
drafted by a basically self-serving elite? >>
Yeah, but the scholarship of the book is pretty thorough discredited. Forrest MacDonald, a conservative but a good historian, pretty much demolsihed it in a book called We the People back in the 50s. The conclusion is probably partly defensible, but not Beard's argument.
--jks