© 2015 by Robert Curry
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FIRST AMERICAN EDITION
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Curry, Robert, 1944–
Common sense nation: unlocking the forgotten power of the American idea/Robert Curry.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59403-826-6 (ebook)
1. United States—Politics and government—Philosophy. 2. Founding Fathers of the United States. 3. United States. Declaration of Independence. 4. United States. Constitution. I. Title.
JK31.C87 2015
320.973—dc23
2015017131
Dedicated to my lovely bride, Lisa, and to my many friends at the Claremont Institute, especially Charles Kadlec, Brian Kennedy, Claire Landiss, and John Marini who so generously helped me with this book.
“The Foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period; the researches of the human mind after social happiness have been carried to a great extent, the treasures of knowledge . . . are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the establishment of our forms of government.”
—GEORGE WASHINGTON ON AMERICA’S FOUNDING
“The sacred rights of mankind are . . . written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”
—ALEXANDER HAMILTON
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
—THOMAS JEFFERSON
“Common Sense Realism was virtually the official creed of the American Republic . . . So what was it? . . . The power of common judgment belongs to everyone, rich or poor, educated or uneducated; indeed, we exercise it every day in hundreds of ways. Of course, ordinary people make mistakes—but so do philosophers . . . On some things, however, like the existence of the real world and basic moral truths, they know they don’t have to prove it. These things are . . . self-evident, meaning they are ‘no sooner understood than they are believed’ because they ‘carry the light of truth itself.’”
—ARTHUR HERMAN
Contents
FOREWORD
by Victor Davis Hanson
Preface
Introduction
OVERTURE
Locke’s Revolution
ONE
The Founders
TWO
The American Enlightenment
THREE
The Declaration of Independence
FOUR
The Constitution
FIVE
The Federalist Papers
SIX
Religion and the American Enlightenment
SEVEN
Turning Away from the Founders
EIGHT
Common Sense Nation
NINE
A Brief History of “Liberalism”
POSTSCRIPT
How to Misunderstand the Founders
APPENDIX I
Suggested Reading
APPENDIX II
The Declaration of Independence
APPENDIX III
The Constitution of the United States of America
Index
Foreword by Victor Davis Hanson
Robert Curry believes that the roots and traditions of the Founding Fathers should once again become common knowledge to contemporary Americans. These are strange times in which all too many citizens are confused about their present culture and government. Ignorance of our own past is largely the cause. A broad cluelessness also exists about how America’s creation has been deliberately massaged for contemporary political purposes in ways antithetical to the views of the Founders.
In truth, present political agendas seek to remake or obliterate the American past. Even many of those who are familiar with the contours of the American Revolution and the founding of the republic, especially in academia, journalism, the arts, and politics, believe that the late eighteenth-century birth of America was either morally problematic or has—and should have—little relevance for the contemporary United States. Twenty-first-century America, then, to the degree that it is exemplary, powerful, and influential abroad, owes its good fortune more to natural luck—a huge land mass, abundant natural resources, and a large population—in the manner of, say, Brazil, China, or Russia. Even if a nation’s customs and traditions do count, our history is largely the story of an establishment of white males who thrived through the oppression of minorities, women, indigenous peoples, and immigrants, and whose founding principles still can reflect those class and racial prejudices.
Curry believes that the causes for this epidemic of false knowledge are explainable by the decline of classical liberalism. It once championed the liberty and unfettered expression of the individual, but was absorbed and corrupted by modern liberalism. The latter counterfeit doctrine immodestly assumed the state’s right of almost limitless power over the individual to ensure an equality of result, largely by using government capital and power to change the nature of man. In other words, the Founders’ promotion of the unfettered intellect to appreciate how divinely endowed freedom is innate to the human condition gave way to a government creed embracing secularism, atheism, and agnosticism. Only the supposedly pure reason of self-appointed experts could explain all the mysteries of man’s physical and spiritual existence.