Up from the Liberal Founding

During the 20th century, scholars of the American founding generally believed that it was liberal. Specifically, they saw the founding as rooted in the political thought of 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. In addition, they saw Locke as a primarily secular thinker, one who sought to isolate the role of religion from political considerations except when necessary to prop up the various assumptions he made for natural rights. These included a divine creator responsible for a rational world for humans to discover. Such a god was hardly the God of the reigning Protestants predominant during the period when Locke or our Founders lived. This view of Locke and the American founding was “bipartisan” in that both conservative and progressive scholars agreed on the central importance of the “liberal tradition” in American politics. While Leo Strauss and Louis Hartz could not agree on much, they could at least agree on a Lockean America. The full expression of this view could be found in Bernard Bailyn’s classic The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, published in 1967, perhaps not coincidentally the last year the American “liberal consensus” remained intact. Read Full Article »