A story of America

At it's core, America has always been driven by its opposition to tyranny

Washington Crossing the Delaware - Emanuel Leutze (1851)

In my last post, I made the case that stories are critical to defining the purpose and orientation of a people. Stories show us, by what they include and what they exclude, what is important. They show us what to focus on, what we should care about, and how we should think about our existence, mission, and purpose in the world. They have the power to unite us. But they also have the power to divide us, confuse us, and destroy us.

There are many stories of America being told today. These include stories about the origins of our country, the way it supposedly was 70 years ago, and the way it supposedly is today.¹

As you may recall, I originally set out this year to write a series of articles about liberalism. America is a big piece of that question and the story of America is obviously pertinent to that question. Over the last few months, I’ve been re-reading the founding documents of America as well as Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau, plus a bunch of other histories that I outlined in my first post in the series. And when I step back and look across all of this, it seems to me that the origins of the American system lie foremost not just in liberalism but in a particular obsession with an opposition to tyranny.

Today, we often associate America with freedom. Given that freedom is the opposite of tyranny, it might seem uninteresting to state that America is obsessed with opposing tyranny. But, I think this is an important difference. We humans often unite more in opposition to what we hate than in our commitment to what we actively want. I think the early days of America were the same. Americans were pro-freedom, sure. But at their core, they were united first in their opposition to tyranny. I think this is an important distinction for understanding America both then and now.

The anti-tyrannical origins of America

This story begins with the origins of America in May 1607 when 104 English men and boys arrived in what is now Jamestown, Virginia to start the Virginia colony. (My Virginia upbringing and K12 Virginia history is about to start showing).

Now, whatever you might think about the settlers and their mission and goals, it’s worth remembering that this was a tough undertaking. Imagine being on a boat with 100 dudes for 6 months to go on a never ending camping trip with no modern medicines, no electronics, and basically no food. Nothing but hard tack and gruel. They were lucky to get some food from the local Powhatan Indians, but those relations were strained and by 1610 it’s estimated that 80-90% of the men had died of starvation and disease.

I remember visiting Jamestown as a kid and thinking—what was wrong with these people; this sounds horrible; why would they voluntarily do this? Thru hikers on the Appalachian trail rave over the ice cream that they can purchase at the lodges along the way. They have tech tees and waterproof shells. Imagine having only natural fibers, no lodge, no communication, no electricity, and having to endure…indefinitely. No modern outdoor activity really compares to the Age of Exploration.²

Fortunately for the Virginia colony, things began to turn around. John Rolfe married Pocahontas in 1614 and by the year 1619, there was peace with the natives. The Virginia company was now growing and exporting tobacco³ and the the first Africans were brought to the colony to work the farms. This is where “The 1619 project” gets its name.

Of course the story didn’t end there. In 1622, relations with the Indians soured and in a surprise attack, 30% of the 1,200 settlers were killed. The next 70 years were marked with on and off fighting as the settlers scraped together a living. The reason I emphasize the difficulty of these early days is that they no doubt selected for a certain kind of toughness and independence.

A perfect example of this was Bacon’s rebellion (1676). Conflicts with the natives had been again increasing and Nathaniel Bacon and a band of underclass Virginians who were trying to survive on the outer fringes of the colony wanted to push them back. The Colonial Governor William Berkeley, however, refused. Quite upset about this, Bacon organized a makeshift militia of disgruntled American frontiersmen, indentured servants, and free and enslaved African Americans, and in what was by all accounts an unbridled and bloody expression of force, not only drove back the natives but also turned on Jamestown, drove out Berkeley, and burned most of it to the ground.⁴

The rebellion was undeniably brutal, unjust, and unlawful. But the point is, if you put a bunch of poor people on the edges of civilization and tell them to survive on their own, they come out tough, independent, self-sufficient, and especially prickly when the “elite” down there in Jamestown try to tell them what to do.

Modern natural rights

I just told you the early Virginia history, but it’s worth remembering that the Mayflower came over in 1620 and that New England was also developing during this time. Forts and settlements were being built all along the east coast. By the year 1699, the colonial capital of Virginia had moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg, and somewhere along the way, America went from “camping trip” status to something more stable. By 1750, the population of the colonies had increased to 1.5m people. This time also included the births of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and many other founding fathers.

Meanwhile, two other things were happening:

1. Tensions with Britain continued to rise. The colonies were now of significant size, had achieved stability in their institutions, and were increasingly economically productive. For this, they increasingly saw their outputs as their own. But, of course, in the eyes of the King, they were still vassals of the British empire, and their existence was solely to produce wealth. This was increasingly frustrating for the Americans.

2. Enlightenment and liberal ideas were seeping in from Europe. Thomas Jefferson entered William and Mary in 1761 where he studied philosophy and metaphysics and was exposed to John Locke, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton. Madison entered Princeton in 1769 and also studied the works of the enlightenment. These guys emerged in the 1870s and 80s as young men with the hottest ideas on the planet about natural rights, freedoms, and liberalism. Madison would go on to write most of the U.S. constitution while Jefferson, in 1776, penned The Declaration of Independence.

There’s too much to quote from the Declaration of Independence, but it is so good and so short, that you should just re-read it. It’s a revolutionary nuclear bomb. It starts with the famous “self-evident truths” —i.e. natural rights—”unalienable rights”—including life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But later on, it describes why the colonies were declaring independence.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I.e. this isn’t just a fun colonial activity—the signatories of The Declaration saw it as their duty to break from an unjust tyranny. Notice also the repeated mentions of tyranny.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

It then goes on with a long list of grievances including oppressive laws, not responding to the will of the people, violating their natural rights, and imposing unjust burdens upon them. And their conclusion:

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

The final paragraph begins with:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States

The U.S.A. was off to a hot start. The revolutionary war was fought from 1775-1783, and the constitutional convention held in 1787.

Ambition to counteract ambition

At the constitutional convention, opposition to tyranny was still at the top of the agenda. For than a hundred years, Americans, including many of the “founding fathers,”⁵ had experienced tyranny firsthand—of Colonial Governors and of King George. They realized that, if men will be ruling other men, then they must have some ability to police and regulate themselves. In Federalist 51 Madison writes: "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

The solution to this problem was to separate the centers of power into several different bodies of equal power. The most famous “separation of powers” is the three branches of government: the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, described articles 1, 2, and 3 of the U.S. constitution. It’s worth emphasizing that this separation of powers is built into the structure of The Constitution itself. It is perhaps the most important aspect of the document.

But, the separation of powers goes further than this. Our legislative branch is also divided between a house and a senate, each elected by different means. And we should not forget that the 10th Amendment makes clear that any powers that are not specifically given to the federal government, nor withheld from the states, are reserved for the states—that the states hold tremendous power as well. And by the way, all 50 of them are modeled on the federal government, and each have a legislative, an executive, and a judiciary branch.

This dispersion of power is truly unique in the history of humanity, and as the late Justice Scalia argued (in a senate judiciary hearing), it is the secret sauce that makes America what it is. The reason it is such a perfect secret sauce is that it counteracts the core problem with modernity. In the modern age, as I’ve written about elsewhere, we devalued virtue. And without virtue, we cannot count on rulers to be virtuous with their power (obviously). So instead, we must control their power. And the best way to do this is to pit power against power. Let me break this down a little more.

Guardians vs gridlock

Much later, in the 1940s, F.A. Hayek supposed that the people who naturally rise to the top of modern governments are just the kind of people who you might not want having centralized power. These people, he said, tend to become nihilists or skeptics; they lack understanding for the people they rule, but most importantly, they lack respect for these people. This is what America’s founders saw in King George, it’s what Bacon and his followers saw in Governor Berkeley, and it’s what many people see in the elite, ruling class of today.⁶

Sad as it is, there is truth to this sentiment. In my own work, I once interacted with an environmental lobbyist who, after I pointed out that her TV ad was misleading about climate change, told me quite aggressively: “It doesn’t matter; people are stupid; they don’t understand science; all that matters is that we get people to vote how we want them to vote.” This was a 30-something woman who regularly displayed her progressive bona fides of caring for and giving voice to “the oppressed classes”.

Let’s assume that other people like her occupy positions of power in government (do your best to imagine this). One option of dealing with this person would be to try to educate her to be more virtuous—to act as a selfless and honest “guardian” of the people. This was Plato’s approach. But, another way of dealing with her is to pit her desire to rule against another person like her. This was what Machiavelli stumbled upon. This is what Locke wrote about. And the founding fathers took the same approach in the constitution.

And thus, the fact that we now have gridlock in much of the American political system was part of the design. No single person or group—especially someone like my environmental lobbyist friend—was supposed to have all the power. She and people like her (and her inverse counterparts) can and do make a lot of noise, but when they try to take over the system, the system is designed to have an immune reaction to them. And since we currently have a lot of people like this trying to take over the system, we are seeing a lot of immune reactions. And as painful as this is, it is almost certainly what the founders would have wanted. They would have taken gridlock over tyranny every single time.

Sic semper tyrannus

Once the U.S. had thrown off Britain, the next 100 years were largely a time of isolationism from global affairs. The Monroe doctrine (1832) basically stated that the era of European colonialism in the Americas was over and that European meddling in U.S. affairs would be seen as a hostile act. U.S. foreign policy was thus: you leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.

Now the country could grow on it’s own terms. Much like the 1600s, the 1800s saw several massive waves of expansion westward in the spirit of manifest destiny including wars between natives and frontiersmen—on the edges of civilization. Like the 1600s, these frontiersmen were tough, independent, and didn’t like being told what to do by elites from far away. This was true of the West but also of the South. The U.S. Civil War is a massive topic, but one way of looking at it, and indeed, one way the 11 states who succeed saw it, was as a rebellion against the “tyranny” of northern states over “their way of life.”

During this time of expansion, the country was also growing strong and populous. In 1860 the U.S. was 30M people and by 1880 it was 50M people. In a generation it had blown past the UK, France, and Germany, each of which had 40-50M people. The Spanish American War added Puerto Rico, Guam, and The Philippines to U.S. territories. WWI pulled it back into Europe. By 1920 it was 100M people. The age of isolation was over. America was now a powerhouse. The next big global event—the moment that would prove its power—was WWII.

Kilroy was here

Obviously there is a lot of history associated with WWII. How it came about, how it progressed, and how it ended. What I want to highlight here is that, as the tide turned in the war, it was the first time America had embarked on a dedicated mission to globally export its ideological opposition to tyranny through its commitment to liberalism.

As the allied powers slowly pushed out the Axis powers, they “liberated” occupied regions in Africa, France, Poland, China, SE Asia from the “tyrannical power” of the Axis occupiers. The flagpoles at the WWII memorial on the National Mall in D.C. state this clearly: “AMERICANS CAME TO LIBERATE, NOT TO CONQUER, TO RESTORE FREEDOM AND TO END TYRANNY.” The stated aim was everywhere the same as what the founding fathers would have said about their own mission: to end tyranny. But whereas the founding fathers had been objecting to the tyranny they felt over themselves, after WWII, Americans were objecting to tyranny elsewhere. And the reason for this objection was that these tyrannical regimes, by invading neighbor after neighbor and imposing their will, had wreaked global devastation, namely, the death of 60-80 million people, the destruction of much of Europe, and the systematic extermination of several groups of people. And if you want to say that the rest of the world should just worry about itself, remember that the cost in the U.S. was also high. More than 400,000 Americans died, more than 40% of the U.S. GDP had to be devoted to the war effort, and it all started when American soil was attacked in Pearl Harbor.

It’s hard to imagine what the years were like from 1945-1950, but two things seemed to be on everyone’s minds: (1) Get home; make babies⁷ and (2) for the love of God, please don’t let that happen again.

Using government to prevent tyranny

As the Treaty of Versailles had shown, if the post war period were run poorly, resentment and remilitarization would shortly follow. The allies knew they needed to get the post-war order correct, but they also had to contend with two major, new changes:

1. The rapid expansion of technology after WWII made the world closer than ever before. All wars force countries to level up or become subsumed. They force the militarization of the latest science and technology. In WWII this force led to planes that could now regularly fly across oceans, a new level of mass production in factories, electrification, telephones, TV, and many other new devices.⁸ These technologies enabled global trade, commerce, communication, and opportunity.

2. The Allies now stood as uncontested victors all around the earth. After the war, America and its allies stayed in Germany, Italy, and Japan to provide stabilization and rebuilding. Allied troops provided physical security to these regions and also helped write (i.e. oversaw the creation of) their new constitutions. Allies and their western perspectives were, for at least some time, the uncontested global heavyweight champions.

Into this cauldron stepped a cadre of economists who believed that a properly defined global monetary system was necessary to create a fair, stable, system that would allow the world to rebuild—that would create international liquidity and avoid the closed markets and economic warfare that had characterized the period after WWI. There were many events where it all played out, but none greater than the Bretton Woods conference of 1944. John Maynard Keynes, a pro-government British economist, led the way, overseeing the creation of the IMF and the World Bank.

In the neighboring years, and in the name of stability and in opposition to to the conditions that created WWII, the allies (largely led by the U.S.) created of a bunch of new institutions including the United Nations (October 1945), the EU (1950), the world bank (1944), the IMF (1944), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (1947), and the Marshall Plan (1948).⁹ These organizations and activities were initiated as a way to bind countries together through finance and trade. They were also meant to export a form of democratic liberalism that would prevent tyrannical rulers from taking their countries to war.

Using markets to prevent tyranny

Of course, Keynes wasn’t the only economist of the time. One of his contemporaries and intellectual foes, the Austrian school economist Friedreich Hayek, simultaneously argued for less government intervention. In one of his most famous works, The Road to Serfdom (1944), he wrote of “the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning.” Notice the use of tyranny.

Hayek was arguably as famous and influential as Keynes, and many of his ideas are still visible today in America. Milton Friedman built on Hayek with his books Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose (1980). And the neoclassical ideas of free markets, privatization, and deregulation went on to influence economic policy all around the world. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and the liberalism of the 80s were particularly defined by a similar focus on methodological individualism. 

Neoliberalism

The reason I mention both Keynes and Hayek is to point out that there were at least two major countervailing and conflicting economic theories of the post-WWII order. On the one hand, there was the Keynesian emphasis on stability through international liquidity and government intervention—a macro-theory of tyranny prevention. And on the other hand was the Austrian approach of Hayek that was concerned foremost of tyranny over the individual by large centralized systems.

These two systems were and still are in tension with each other. Americans want to be free to choose. We do not want to be lorded over. We value our independence as individuals and as citizens. But we also want global stability. We paid a heavy price when the Japanese bombed our pacific islands and dragged us into an expensive and destructive war. A similar threat exists today, from China. We paid a heavy price when a few European nations aggressed on our European allies. A similar threat exists today, from Russia. Our post-WWII global systems probably still help prevent us from being dragged into another world war. But, we also loathe the way they export jobs, enrich the coastal elites, and crush the soul of middle America.¹⁰

The layering of these two quite different economic approaches is a confusing and contradictory 20th century concoction for both opposing global tyranny and opposing individual tyranny. We call it “neoliberalism.”¹¹

Free speech – extra firepower against tyranny

Whereas separation of powers was built into the core structure of the constitution, free speech was not included in the original text. The first amendment added free speech after the fact, as an amendment to the constitution, and as a compromise between the federalists and the anti-federalists. It’s interesting to consider why this might be the case. Why did the founders focus almost exclusively on the separation of powers and only add in freedom of speech at the end? Why is the constitution not a declaration of free speech rights with an attachment for separation of powers?

The order is critical because free speech depends on government. Only a government free of tyranny can have truly free speech. If a government falls to tyranny, one of the first things it will inevitably do is remove free speech. Why?

We have already established that the separation of powers was designed to prevent tyranny from the inside by pitting ambitious individuals against each other. Freedom of speech prevents tyranny from outside, by giving the people a way to keep their political leaders in check. Its job is to hem in the government when it goes farther than the public wants and to serve as a continual alignment function between the will of the people and the actions of the government.

Many Americans today like to complain that this isn’t true. They say that their government isn’t listening to them. They point to speakers being cancelled. Indeed, such events violate the ideals behind freedom of speech. As disheartening as these injustices are, they are a distraction from the bigger picture. The real power of free speech becomes apparent as the friction with the government intensifies. In countries without free speech, movements are stopped, protests are quelled, and the internet scrubbed. In countries with free speech, the friction can boil the internet and the streets. Protestors can sometimes even overrun town centers and government buildings.

To those who oppose these protests, it can feel like nothing but destructive chaos. And no doubt they can be destructive. But, these protests also make leaders pay attention. They also have the power to dispel would-be tyrants. I realize that’s a pretty bold claim. And, given the destruction we’ve seen from U.S. protests in every decade since at least the 60s, it seems like a high price to pay. But, in drawing attention to themselves, these destructive protests also create backlashes and counter protests, news articles and counter news articles. If there is basis to their grievances, change usually does happen. But if they lack legitimacy, they eventually reveal themselves for what they are. Whichever the outcome, they act as pressure-release valves for a society—a necessary and even essential outlet for revealing the truth of a situation and averting the worst of crises. And by the worst of crises, I mean the big ones: (1) war (2) famine (3) pestilence (4) death.

The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse may seem dramatic, but they earned their top spots in the lineup because of the superiority of their evil. Pol Pot systematically murdered 1/3 of his country's population from 1975-1979. Myanmar, Serbia, China, Armenia all committed state orchestrated extermination of their peoples in the 20th century. Stalin starved at least 5 million people to death in the 30s and Mao starved up to 55 million to death in the 60s. The Axis powers of WWII, including Germany, Japan, and Italy perpetrated several of these atrocities at the same time. All of the actors in these dramas were authoritarian, tyrannical, or working on some form single party rule. All of them restricted freedom of speech.

Imagine a US president systematically executing millions of Californians for political reasons or starving millions of Texans to death for ideological reasons. In a country as loud and raucous as ours, it’s inconceivable that a federal government could get anywhere close to committing such atrocities. Whatever you think about the current state of the US government, it is not anywhere near committing state sponsored exterminations of millions of US citizens and it could never get anywhere even close.¹²

Steven Pinker is infamous for writing several books worth of charts showing that this is the case, and indeed, I am basically trotting out his main point here. I have a lot of critiques of Pinker,¹³ but I think he is correct that liberal values, including freedom of speech, do at least prevent mass atrocities.

The newest fad: authoritarianism

Today however, Americans of both the right and left seem interested in a leader or party that will shepherd their beliefs forward in an authoritarian manner. Democrats long for the unfettered efficiency with which China builds renewable energy projects. Republicans long for the unfettered efficiency with which Russia shuts down protests. Both claim that their party would never go so far as to (pick your favorite four horsemen atrocity from the previous section), but human history has shown us that when power is consolidated into the hands of one body that there is a steady march to consolidating that power, removing rights such as freedom of speech, and eventually ending in tyranny. And at that point, atrocity, though not guaranteed, is just one step away. 

Again, not all authoritarian leaders or regimes commit atrocities (obviously). And not all of them are evil. Some might be, but certainly not all. My point is however that, because of their position, authoritarian regimes are at far greater risk of atrocity than liberal regimes. The reason for this is that, if they are trying at all to run their country in the way they think is best, they will inevitably take actions that generate resistance, and they will be inevitably tempted to discount or suppress dissenting voices. Here are a few ways they can do this:

1. Restricting freedom of speech (e.g. China)

2. Suppressing freedom of speech (e.g. Russia)

3. Ignoring freedom of speech, i.e. not being beholden to an electorate (e.g. King George)

All leaders have critics. No leader likes its critics. But only authoritarian leaders have the ability to actually ignore, suppress, or cut out the critics. And if they take one of these routes, they will inevitably have a much more difficult time knowing whether they are on the side of good or evil because they will have ceded or suppressed the check on their position.

And again, this isn’t even because they are evil. Most of them (perhaps all) believe they are doing good. They believe so strongly that they know what is good for their country and their people that they must take certain actions. Even when their citizens (and perhaps others) are dying en masse, they still believe they are pursuing a correct and good and even necessary moral direction. These moments—moments of moral purpose without check—are when real atrocities happen. After all, almost every major human atrocity has been perpetrated in the name of “the good.” That’s what allows them to persist in the face of such destruction.

Again, this does not mean that authoritarian, tyrannical, or single party rule will necessarily commit atrocities. I am merely stating that that regimes that lack free speech are far more susceptible to them.

A story of America

Perhaps because of the downsides of liberalism (which I will write about soon), some Americans will still want to ditch its core features of democracy, separation of powers, and freedom of speech for something more closely resembling authoritarianism. Perhaps they’ll choose unilateral action over gridlock and suppression of speech over frustrating debate. But, if they do, they will reintroduce old risks that have not been felt since our founding.

Because one thing the American founders got right was their institutional design for opposing tyranny. The settlers, the frontiersmen, and the founders of America—the people of this country were forged in a spirit of self-sufficiency on the edges of civilization. They didn’t want any person or body to lord over them, and they created a system of government that would ensure this. And now 250 years later, despite the best efforts of activists and would-be demagogues, we still tap out at gridlock and protests.

Yes, America has issues. But if we, as a people, believe there is any merit to the founding values of America—to the time and situation that created America, then we should not reach for a superficial fix, not the least cheap tricks to subvert the system or lazy delegation to a would-be tyrant. Instead, we should re-affirm the positive values that accompanied America’s anti-tyrannical founding—a proper dispersion of power across all levels of government, an emphasis on state and local governance, civic engagement, and above all, an extreme skepticism for all forms of concentrated power, particularly in a single person, place, or institution.

1. On the surface of society there is plenty of shallow analysis of this question, e.g., “it was all about X.” [there’s no better indicator of a shallow analysis than a statement of absolute ascription to a single cause]. And in academic circles, there seems to be a similar albeit more esoteric range of disagreement. “The founders were focused on liberalism and republicanism” vs a focus on “natural law and natural right.”

2. To me, the origins were a time of survival. Just as an example, the reason the Virginia company was the first English settlement is because the Roanoke Colony, established in 1585, mysteriously disappeared in 1590.

3. Virginia has a long history in the tobacco business stretching to present day Phillip Morris and Altria group which were/are still based in Richmond VA.

4. Certainly not celebrating Bacon here—he sounds like a brute. But, he and his followers were decidedly anti-big government. His uprising scared the British. In fact, the unification of the “underclasses” in rebellion, particularly the poor white and black men, so disturbed the colonial, European upper class that they hardened the racial caste system with a series of new laws about slavery in an attempt to prevent similar unification in future uprisings.

5. Historian Richard Morris defined these as: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison

6. It’s why the word “deplorable” has been seemingly forever usurped and can now only refer to the 2016 presidential election.

7. Both of my grandpas came back and started making babies about as fast as physically possible.

8. In December 1903 the wright brothers flew the first plane 120 feet. The first transatlantic flight took place only 16 years later, in 1919. The first jet planes flew during WWII and by 1969 a human stood on the moon. Telephone communications, electrification of cities, internal combustion engine cars, radio, and TV were all inventions that not only deployed rapidly in the first half of the 20th century but that fundamentally changed how humans related to each other. Suddenly, communications had become nearly instantaneous. Whereas 19th century novels featured society’s wealthiest people riding 15 miles in an afternoon, now people could fly across the Mediterranean. People could suddenly live 15 miles outside of a city and still work in the city. They could import cars from another part of the world. They could hear daily news of what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic.

9. The culminating liberal creation of this era was the UN declaration of human rights (1948), which defined “basic rights and fundamental freedoms,” that recognize all humans as being “born free and equal in dignity and rights.” This was a major assertion of liberalism across the entire earth.

It’s possible to assert that all of these new organizations were naïve philosophical mistakes. But again, if you believe that the strongest goal post WWII, the north star, the single most important thing that people cared about from the standpoint of political philosophy was the prevention of tyrannical rulers—of the kinds of men and governments that caused WWII—then it makes sense that the west would double down on classical liberal values that above all else were designed to prevent these kinds of systems.

10. Expect more of this in a forthcoming, future post.

11. As an aside, Adam Smith, is often taken as the first serious proponent of the “invisible hand” of free markets. And he was no doubt read by the founding fathers. But political scientists seem to agree that his ideas about markets are largely absent from the founding principles laid out in the origins of American liberalism. I.e. the free markets stuff came later. Capitalism was not a founding principle of America. You can read more about it in The Political Theory of the American Founding by Thomas G West.

12. China on the other hand…

13. For example, his books completely neglect the soul of humans and his books are starved of thymos.