Foundations of American Conservatism

To the student of comparative political theory, few things are more fascinating than the contrast not only between different ages but also between different countries in one and the same age. The greatest advances in the collective thinking of Western humanity have been made coöperatively by men of every nation; and in every age all unite to give to that age its own distinctive character; yet each people contributes something of its own national genius to the spirit of the age. He, then, who would understand a country and the pattern of its people's thinking does well to inquire in what way it has deviated from the thinking of other nations in particular epochs. Whoever looks at early nineteenth-century America must be struck by its aloofness from many of the main currents of Western thinking. In the great Revolution of the eighteenth century, it had not been thus. The Lockean and Blackstonean tradition of the right of Englishmen to protect their property through representative organs; Rousseau's concept of equal natural rights of every individual and the right of the sovereign people in convention to reconstitute society according to its general will; Montesquieu's advocacy of checks and balances as safeguards of liberty; Quesnay's physiocratic cult of land as the natural source of wealth and power; Adam Smith's analysis of the relationship between national policy and private commerce; deism in religion; and associationism in psychology—these were among the many trends in the Age of Reason that came to a focus in the revolt of the thirteen colonies and the establishment of the United States.