A year before the British surrender at Yorktown, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail: “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.” It’s a simple point: times defined by the former are not times defined by the latter.
C. Bradley Thompson understandably desires that Americans “rediscover the philosophy of Americanism,” the philosophy—at least as he understands it—of the American Founding. What Thompson misunderstands, though, is that ours are once again times of war and politics; no mere philosophy can save us now.
Americans of the founders’ age could realize the founders’ philosophy because their character and customs were ingrained with habits that best comported with self-government. Ours were a robust people, formed by the ruggedness of the frontier and the experience of hard-fought struggles for liberty that stretched back generations to England.
First and foremost, though, they were a people filled with a strong political will to govern themselves.
Any revitalization of the philosophy of the American Founding must follow—not precede—a new reassertion of that political will, sine qua non. This is a job of the highest order for statesmen with the greatest talent.
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