The Founders
The Puritans and their ridiculous beliefs… in 1776
I’m reading The Puritan Ordeal by Andrew Delbanco, and while the book is focused on the Puritan religious beliefs in the 17th century, one can’t help reading it as a treatise on American political beliefs in the 18th century.
–The Puritans “impute all faults and corruptions, wherewith the world aboundeth, unto the kind of ecclesiastical government established.” [...]
American Revolution back on!
Brad Hart’s great blog on the Revolutionary period is back in action at American Revolution. In-depth and easy to read–a rare combination. Check it out!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Thomas Hobbes in America
I was rereading Christopher Hill’s often-intriguing book Puritanism and Revolution and came to his chapter on Hobbes. It seems relevant to the discussion of religion in the American Founding.
Hobbes and Locke were contemporaries in adulthood, though Hobbes’ writings predate Locke’s. Locke certainly was influenced by Hobbes’ work. Both men address the question of how to reconcile [...]
The real “Greatest Generation”
I was going to say that it would have to be the Founding generation. But then I changed my mind.
TV news anchor Tom Brokaw put out a book a few years ago called The Greatest Generation, in which he identified Americans who grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s, then fought the Second [...]
National security v. elites at the Constitutional Convention
We tend to think that our politics in the 21st century are uniquely characterized by fears that powerful elites are in control of the government, robbing the people of their voice. But whenever this fear is raised, and people question those in power, those in power turn the conversation toward national security, justifying their grasping power by saying it [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The real allure of the Founders
Everyone is loving the John Adams special on HBO, and with good reason. It’s well done, and gives a real sense of who Adams was. But does it really spell out why he was great?
I was reviewing a study of De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the section where De Tocqueville talks about lawyers. To his [...]
John Adams has my vote!
I was reading Adam’s 1797 inaugural speech, where he has this to say about the American people, when faced by the obvious inability of the Articles of Confederation to form a “durable” government for the United States:
“In this dangerous crisis the people of America were not abandoned by their usual good sense, presence of mind, [...]
