America on Trial: A Protection of the Founding

The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison tablet with a time-release system; we’re its victims. Its ideas are accountable for the nation’s ethical and social disintegration as a result of they have been primarily based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical particular person autonomy.

On this well-researched e-book, Robert Reilly declares: not responsible. To show his case, he traces the lineage of the concepts that made america, and its ordered liberty, attainable. These ideas have been extraordinary after they first burst upon the traditional world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his picture on man; the Greek rational order of the world primarily based upon the Cause behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Cause (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These could appear a great distance from the American Founding, however Reilly argues that they’re, in actual fact, its bedrock. Mixed, they mandated the train of each freedom and cause.

These ideas have been additional developed by thinkers within the Center Ages, who formulated the fundamental ideas of constitutional rule. Why have been they later rejected by these claiming the proper to absolute rule, then reclaimed by the American Founders, solely to be rejected once more at this time? Reilly reveals the underlying drama: the battle of may makes proper versus proper makes may. America’s decline, he claims, is to not be found within the Founding ideas, however of their disavowal.