The American Revolution in the Twenty-First Century

The history of the American Revolution is well known, but its philosophy is hardly known at all. Our political leaders have therefore been oblivious to their awesome responsibility to take a giant step toward furthering that revolution. If taken, that step will be as challenging as the first step was for the generation of 1776. Yet it could create a new and transcendent form of democracy that promises to solve political problems that are at present unsolvable. To give authoritative voice to this philosophy, there are numerous quotations, many of them quite neglected, from eighteenth-century Americans expressing it. The reader can therefore experience directly the enormous excitement that that philosophy had on the generation of 1776. For them, the American Revolution was understood as not only political, but as creating a new kind of civilization that would allow all Americans to prosper in their pursuit of happiness. This book depicts the intellectual, moral, and political challenges that we must solve to live up to those aspirations. The philosophy of the American Revolution is moribund, but we have the responsibility to give it a rebirth, and to embody its practice with an unprecedented degree of excellence in the cause of humanity.