There is a direct correlation between the growing ignorance amidst our citizenry concerning the content of our nation’s foundational documents and the dramatic increase in socialism and even outright Marxism in America’s political landscape. A people ignorant of their own history, not to mention history in general, are a people that are vulnerable to old and bad ideas that have been tried and found wanting. It’s easy for wicked and unprincipled men to dress up bad ideas and make them palatable to the masses when the populous has not developed the needful mental bulwarks against lupine politicians that come as a result of studying the Great Books.
I will not, by any means, go so far as to say that the Founding Fathers of the United State of America were perfect men who created a perfect nation, but I will say that what they crafted in our foundational documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and in the dialectical back and forth between the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers, was something unprecedentedly excellent amidst all of political history.
What is it about our nation which has made us so prosperous up to this point? There are, I believe, two major factors.
First, The United States of America has been an unprecedented success because our founding fathers were not ignorant of history. Our founders were liberally educated men who had studied the western canon of literature (which is the common inheritance of our people). They had studied the Bible along with its political principles and concepts, they read Plato and Aristotle and the other great political philosophers of the ancient Greeks, they studied the rise and fall of Rome as it went from a monarchy to a republic to an empire, and they wrestled with their greatest political thinkers, like Cicero, they studied the political thought of the great Medieval men like Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas, and they were conversant with the more recent giants of political thought such as John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, David Hume, and Thomas Hobbes. Our founders were steeped in the great conversation of political philosophy and theory throughout the ages, they paid attention to past successes and failures in regard to what makes a people free and prosperous, and they put together the single greatest country the world has ever seen when it comes to creating liberty and justice for all.
The second reason why The United States of America has been an unprecedented success is because it has been a nation founded on Christian principles and has historically and overwhelmingly enjoyed a Christian citizenry throughout most of its existence. That our founding fathers presumed upon these Christian principles when forming our nation’s documents could not be more evident if one simply reads the things they said. John Adams, the second president of the United States, once wrote: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
In other words, the success of our nation thus far is because of the wisdom gained from the ages working in tandem with a highly religious, namely Christian, people. Christians, as they follow the teaching of Scripture, do not only look out for themselves but for their neighbor. They are concerned not only with their own good, but the common good. As Leviticus 19:18 commands believers, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” This Jesus affirmed as the second highest commandment in the whole of Scripture, trailing only behind “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.” (c.f. Mark 12:29-31)
While the Christian Scriptures, particularly the ten commandments (c.f. Exodus 20) and subsequent judicial case law found throughout the Pentateuch, declare and uphold various rights of the individual (such as life, liberty, and property) they also teach loving self-sacrifice and caring concern for the poor imploring believers to share what we have with those in need. The golden mean of Christian social ethics is found between an anarchical absolute liberty (anti-nomianism) where one only looks out for self and enslavement to tyrants who like to talk about things such as “seizing the means of production” and “abolishing personal property and individual rights” in favor of “the warmth of collectivism.” The Christian religion teaches that men, in subjection to their Creator, must learn to govern themselves well according to God’s moral law (Psalm 119; 2 Peter 1:3-11; et al.) and that if they work honestly and hard before the Lord their God and for their families they may prosper and do well (Proverbs 14:23; 10:4; 13:11; 21:5; et al.). The Scriptures teach that we ought to be generous and kind to those in need (Deuteronomy 15:11; Proverbs 14:31; 31:8-9; Matthew 25:31-46; et al.) , but also that this should come about willingly and apart from external compulsion (Acts 5:1-11; 2 Corinthians 9:6-7; et al.). In other words, Christianity, just like our Constitution, rejects both anarchy and totalitarianism (whether Fascist or Marxist or Monarchical).
Generally the critics of our great nation fall into one of two categories (with much room for overlap). Either they are completely ignorant of our nation’s history and have never carefully studied the principles and concepts of our great Republic which have been inscribed in our founding documents or they are dictatorial types who long for a kind of power not permitted to them by a Constitution such as ours. The former are often “useful idiots” who are but pawns in the game of the latter. It’s not uncommon to hear slogans from the Marxist playbook being tossed around in our civil (or, otherwise, not so civil) discourse today, but it is much harder to find such mantras coming out of the mouths of those who have actually read both our founding documents as well as the Communist Manifesto. And, if you think it’s hard to find such a person as this, it’s nearly impossible to find anyone who is calling for the end of our great nation who is so fully conversant with Great Tradition as were our founding fathers.
Sometimes tyranny looks like the political left, sometimes it looks like the political right, but in the end it’s hard to tell the difference between either kind of tyranny on the points that matter most. Tyranny is tyranny and America has been a beacon to the world throughout its history proclaiming man’s absolute, and God-given, right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”1 Our nation was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”2 Our Constitution was written to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”3 and if anyone should wish to bring such a nation to an end then let them do so by leaping over the bodies of every patriot still willing to cry “Give me liberty, or give me death!”4
Below you will find links to each section of the study guide over the Founding Documents of The United States of America as they become available. For a list of other Great Books study guides already available, in development, or planned for the future you can click HERE.
The Constitution of The United States of America
The Federalist Papers
The Anti-Federalist Papers
From The Declaration of Independence.
From Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” (1863)
From the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Patrick Henry, from a speech he made to the Second Virginia Convention on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.
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