A Liberal v. Latin Integralists

Who should care about Poli. Sci. departments these days. when it's filled with liberals like this?

The American Mind: The Rise and Fall of the Pajama-Boy Nietzscheans by C. Bradley Thompson (Encounter Books)

The founders’ Americanism is most identifiably expressed in the leading political documents of the founding era: the Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson said was an “expression of the American mind,” and in the revolutionary state constitutions as well as the federal Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The classical liberalism of the founding era assumed that individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are grounded in nature and that government’s primary responsibility is to protect those rights.

This meant that government must be impartial in adjudicating rival conceptions of the good life. That is not to say, however, that the founders’ liberal order was not grounded on a robust moral foundation—it was.

The practical implementation of these principles created the freest and wealthiest nation in human history. It also created the most moral nation known to man. The founders’ frontier republicanism created a nation of self-owning, self-governing, self-starting, and self-reliant men and women who lived by a rigorous moral code defined by certain uniquely American virtues: rationality, independence, initiative, industriousness, frugality, enterprise, creativity, adventurousness, courage, optimism. America’s liberal order was forged when the ideas of Thomas Jefferson passed through the Cumberland Gap and were put into practice by men like Daniel Boone and women like Annie Oakley.

This is precisely why hundreds of millions of immigrants—myself included—have come to this place for over 245 years. This is not flowery or filio-pietistic rhetoric. These are easily demonstrable facts. Those facts have sometimes been messy and ugly, but on the whole the rise of the United States of America may be the world’s greatest story of human achievement. There was a time, of course, when most Americans (especially conservatives and libertarians) agreed with this assessment. Sadly, that is no longer true.

Another nuAmerican lecturing Americans about what America is. No thanks.

We published this because it represents a lot of academic/intellectual murmurings these days about folks like @SohrabAhmari & @PatrickDeneen (neither are Nietzscheans) & recent discussions at our own @theammind. Let’s have it out in the open, shall we?https://t.co/hmjabau9Dh

— Matthew J. Peterson (@docMJP) May 13, 2020

I can’t take this. I’m standing outside doubling over laughing. He’s saying our Founding does not encompass:

Authority
Order
Stability
Community
Social cohesion
Continuity
Solidarity
Sacrifice
Duty
Virtue
Goodness
God pic.twitter.com/yNieoR76sS

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) May 13, 2020