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America on trial : a defense of the founding / Robert R. Reilly ; with a foreword by Larry P. Arnn.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Reilly, Robert R., 1946- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Political leadership--United States.
- Political leadership.
- Founding Fathers of the United States.
- Church and state--United States--Early works to 1800.
- Church and state.
- United States.
- Genre:
- Early works.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (273 pages)
- Place of Publication:
- San Francisco : Ignatius Press, [2020]
- Summary:
- The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy. In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his image on man; the Greek rational order of the world based upon the Reason behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Reason (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These may seem a long way from the American Founding, but Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock.
- Contents:
- Introduction: Do we hold these truths?
- The legacies of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome
- The medieval roots of constitutionalism
- The loss of reason and nature
- Enter: Martin Luther
- Exit: Christendom
- Richard Hooker: restoring natural law
- Thomas Hobbes and the rise of secular absolutism
- The divine right of kings and its enemies
- John Locke: problem or solution?
- A restorative founding on reason
- The Antipodes: the American Revolution versus the French Revolution
- Critiquing the critics: why they go wrong about what was right
- Epilogue: If the founding was good, why did things go bad?
- Notes:
- Description based on print version record.
- ISBN:
- 1-64229-114-5
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