This is sad and also exactly why Trump and Nationalist Conservatives are now overrunning the conservative movement.
There seems to be no real understanding of America's founding documents and ideals, but more importantly no real understanding of where to even begin in analyzing them.
The Founders wanted "common good?" Then the founding of America would be no different to anything that came before. From the savage tribal councils, through to tyrannical kings and to the bureaucracy of any communist hellhole, all these forms of government cared only about the "common good."
What the Founders did was create the worlds first rights-protecting republic and in doing so broke with everything that came before. That's what was so revolutionary about it.
But this is impossible to understand for those who don't understand the concept of rights, therefore don't understand the concept of rights-protecting government and as a result don't understand American politics or politics in general.
It's individual rights vs common good. It's not both.
Conservatives urgently need to discard everything they think they know about politics, such that it is, and pretty much start from scratch.
You say: "What the Founders did was create the worlds first rights-protecting republic and in doing so broke with everything that came before. That's what was so revolutionary about it.”
I don’t think that is true.
Here’s a link to the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641. By the time the Liberties had be promulgated, the settlers in the Bay Colony had already established the idea taxation only with the consent of the governed, popular sovereignty, annual elections, representative government and trial by jury. The liberties added equal protection of the laws, separation of of church and state (counter intuitive but never the less true as far as it could be accomplished given the time, the place and the circumstances) and a number of other individual rights that seemed particularly important to them as they do to us now.
History is full of different events, ideas, some significant, some not, some steps forward and some steps backwards. But being able to tell which is which requires proper thinking skills because of the abstract nature of the subject.
For example, once you learn how to think in essentials you will understand why 1776 and the founding documents are more significant than the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641.
It was the first. The Bay Colony was not a rights-protecting republic but it was in the right direction. So was the Magna Carta. So was the first cave man that created the first tribal law. Perhaps that's when America was actually founded. I mean, without knowing what the essentials are there's no way to know anyway.
Common good is one of those terms with both an individual (distributive) and collective meaning. This is, was or should be known to high school students. It can refer to the good of each individual _as an individual_ or to a good which transcends individuals, as if there is a supernatural entity, the Common Good. Both conservatives and Leftists evade the 400 year cultural change from supernaturalism to the natural universe that occured from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. They also, as a poster here noted, condemn Enlightenment individualism. This is the product of Hegelian contradictions and of the concrete-bound, Pragmatist mentality of isolating contradictions from each other. See "Nation Of The Enlightenment" by Leonard Peikoff for a philosophically fundamental study that distinguishes basics from non-basics. Other studies often arbitrarily claim something as basic or don't even concern themselves with the intellectual tool of contextual basicness. They grab something that feels good and run with it, covering their tracks with excessive and out-of-context scholarship. _Nature's God_ by Matthew Stewart claims Epicurean subjectivism as the cause of America's founding. An impressive number of centuries of quotes validly shows this non-basic influence. But there is not the slightest recognition of the basic influence of Aristotle's philosophy of reason as the context of the Founder's respect for philosophy, realism and reason. Stewart is-surprise!-a conventional advocate of Leftist subjectivism.
Exactly, but those who understand how to think in essentials understand what the Founders meant by "common good" and it's not the collectivist interpretation offered in this article. This inability to think in essentials is why I often refer to conservative thinkers as cargo cultists.
"Stewart is-surprise!-a conventional advocate of Leftist subjectivism."
So are most conservatives once you strip away their arbitrary and superficial talking points. If I was to sum up conservative political ideology today it would be something like: "we oppose those atheist commies, what we want is the state to centrally plan everything instead. Also, go to church."
I think it's way past time that conservatives are called out as being nothing more than religious and very confused leftists. There is simply no "right wing," meaning advocates of rights-protecting government and capitalism, in the mainstream anymore.
> If I was to sum up conservative political ideology today it would be something like: "we oppose those atheist commies, what we want is the state to centrally plan everything instead. Also, go to church."
Agreed, in the context of politics. But philosophy, known abstractly or concretely, is the framework in the mind that explains basically how man knows reality. Is politics guided by a focused mind or by rationalizations of evasion? Is reality ordered and knowable or chaotic and unknowable. Is man capable of reason or condemned to irrationalism. Can man use ideology to make long range plans or is he condemned to short-range Pragmatist crises? Does man have a moral/political right to his own life or is he a moral slave to society and/or God?
> I think it's way past time that conservatives are called out as being nothing more than religious and very confused leftists.
There's a certain truth to that. But more religious or more confused? Or are those the same thing? And recall that the Nazis were National Socialists. Rand, in "Conservatism: An Obituary," said something to the effect that while liberals were stupid, conservatives were uber-stupid. Nothing has changed. Some YouTube blog posts by conservatives are virtually psychedelic in their lack of rationality and knowledge. They do feel strongly, however, as Trump discovered.
> This inability to think in essentials is why I often refer to conservative thinkers as cargo cultists.
Intellectual cargo cultists! An interesting new category. Rand discussed something like this in "The Missing Link, Part II: The Anti-Conceptual Mentality." We can laugh but its really not a laughing matter. Leftists pretend to intellectuality but conservatives are in open war against it. When I was a philosophy student in the 1970s, there was a philosophy of religion course in the department and only because the professor was a Jesuit! But, now, they have a religion minor. That's a big intellectual change.
The scholarly ability to evade the Enlightenment as the only basically individualist culture in history is as destructive as the conservative and Leftist claims that it was basically a collectivist culture. Taking facts out of this context leaves the scholar with any claim that might satisfy the whims of the power-lusters the Founders came close to burying. These creatures reject their own minds for tradition or equality and call for a historically blood-drenched statism that will enforce that rejection on those who choose mind over willful mindlessness. Both Declaration and Constitution, explicitly or implicitly, call for a rationally absolute politics of individual rights. The Enlightenment was also basically rational, the indirect product of America's founding grandfather, Aristotle. His enemies, Jesus and Marx, united in hatred of man's mind, must be intellectually destroyed before the promise of America can be renewed. Fortunately, _Atlas Shrugged_, provides the intellectual ammunition. It can make the American mind great again.
This is sad and also exactly why Trump and Nationalist Conservatives are now overrunning the conservative movement.
There seems to be no real understanding of America's founding documents and ideals, but more importantly no real understanding of where to even begin in analyzing them.
The Founders wanted "common good?" Then the founding of America would be no different to anything that came before. From the savage tribal councils, through to tyrannical kings and to the bureaucracy of any communist hellhole, all these forms of government cared only about the "common good."
What the Founders did was create the worlds first rights-protecting republic and in doing so broke with everything that came before. That's what was so revolutionary about it.
But this is impossible to understand for those who don't understand the concept of rights, therefore don't understand the concept of rights-protecting government and as a result don't understand American politics or politics in general.
It's individual rights vs common good. It's not both.
Conservatives urgently need to discard everything they think they know about politics, such that it is, and pretty much start from scratch.
You say: "What the Founders did was create the worlds first rights-protecting republic and in doing so broke with everything that came before. That's what was so revolutionary about it.”
I don’t think that is true.
Here’s a link to the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641. By the time the Liberties had be promulgated, the settlers in the Bay Colony had already established the idea taxation only with the consent of the governed, popular sovereignty, annual elections, representative government and trial by jury. The liberties added equal protection of the laws, separation of of church and state (counter intuitive but never the less true as far as it could be accomplished given the time, the place and the circumstances) and a number of other individual rights that seemed particularly important to them as they do to us now.
https://history.hanover.edu/texts/masslib.html
It is no exaggeration to say that the New England Bible republics were also secular Leveller republics.
History is full of different events, ideas, some significant, some not, some steps forward and some steps backwards. But being able to tell which is which requires proper thinking skills because of the abstract nature of the subject.
For example, once you learn how to think in essentials you will understand why 1776 and the founding documents are more significant than the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641.
But you said “first” not “most significant.” And the experience of the Bay Colony between 1630-1775 certainly made the events of 1775-89 possible.
It was the first. The Bay Colony was not a rights-protecting republic but it was in the right direction. So was the Magna Carta. So was the first cave man that created the first tribal law. Perhaps that's when America was actually founded. I mean, without knowing what the essentials are there's no way to know anyway.
Common good is one of those terms with both an individual (distributive) and collective meaning. This is, was or should be known to high school students. It can refer to the good of each individual _as an individual_ or to a good which transcends individuals, as if there is a supernatural entity, the Common Good. Both conservatives and Leftists evade the 400 year cultural change from supernaturalism to the natural universe that occured from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. They also, as a poster here noted, condemn Enlightenment individualism. This is the product of Hegelian contradictions and of the concrete-bound, Pragmatist mentality of isolating contradictions from each other. See "Nation Of The Enlightenment" by Leonard Peikoff for a philosophically fundamental study that distinguishes basics from non-basics. Other studies often arbitrarily claim something as basic or don't even concern themselves with the intellectual tool of contextual basicness. They grab something that feels good and run with it, covering their tracks with excessive and out-of-context scholarship. _Nature's God_ by Matthew Stewart claims Epicurean subjectivism as the cause of America's founding. An impressive number of centuries of quotes validly shows this non-basic influence. But there is not the slightest recognition of the basic influence of Aristotle's philosophy of reason as the context of the Founder's respect for philosophy, realism and reason. Stewart is-surprise!-a conventional advocate of Leftist subjectivism.
Exactly, but those who understand how to think in essentials understand what the Founders meant by "common good" and it's not the collectivist interpretation offered in this article. This inability to think in essentials is why I often refer to conservative thinkers as cargo cultists.
"Stewart is-surprise!-a conventional advocate of Leftist subjectivism."
So are most conservatives once you strip away their arbitrary and superficial talking points. If I was to sum up conservative political ideology today it would be something like: "we oppose those atheist commies, what we want is the state to centrally plan everything instead. Also, go to church."
I think it's way past time that conservatives are called out as being nothing more than religious and very confused leftists. There is simply no "right wing," meaning advocates of rights-protecting government and capitalism, in the mainstream anymore.
> If I was to sum up conservative political ideology today it would be something like: "we oppose those atheist commies, what we want is the state to centrally plan everything instead. Also, go to church."
Agreed, in the context of politics. But philosophy, known abstractly or concretely, is the framework in the mind that explains basically how man knows reality. Is politics guided by a focused mind or by rationalizations of evasion? Is reality ordered and knowable or chaotic and unknowable. Is man capable of reason or condemned to irrationalism. Can man use ideology to make long range plans or is he condemned to short-range Pragmatist crises? Does man have a moral/political right to his own life or is he a moral slave to society and/or God?
.
> I think it's way past time that conservatives are called out as being nothing more than religious and very confused leftists.
There's a certain truth to that. But more religious or more confused? Or are those the same thing? And recall that the Nazis were National Socialists. Rand, in "Conservatism: An Obituary," said something to the effect that while liberals were stupid, conservatives were uber-stupid. Nothing has changed. Some YouTube blog posts by conservatives are virtually psychedelic in their lack of rationality and knowledge. They do feel strongly, however, as Trump discovered.
> This inability to think in essentials is why I often refer to conservative thinkers as cargo cultists.
Intellectual cargo cultists! An interesting new category. Rand discussed something like this in "The Missing Link, Part II: The Anti-Conceptual Mentality." We can laugh but its really not a laughing matter. Leftists pretend to intellectuality but conservatives are in open war against it. When I was a philosophy student in the 1970s, there was a philosophy of religion course in the department and only because the professor was a Jesuit! But, now, they have a religion minor. That's a big intellectual change.
The scholarly ability to evade the Enlightenment as the only basically individualist culture in history is as destructive as the conservative and Leftist claims that it was basically a collectivist culture. Taking facts out of this context leaves the scholar with any claim that might satisfy the whims of the power-lusters the Founders came close to burying. These creatures reject their own minds for tradition or equality and call for a historically blood-drenched statism that will enforce that rejection on those who choose mind over willful mindlessness. Both Declaration and Constitution, explicitly or implicitly, call for a rationally absolute politics of individual rights. The Enlightenment was also basically rational, the indirect product of America's founding grandfather, Aristotle. His enemies, Jesus and Marx, united in hatred of man's mind, must be intellectually destroyed before the promise of America can be renewed. Fortunately, _Atlas Shrugged_, provides the intellectual ammunition. It can make the American mind great again.