#187: America: Screwed or Salvageable?—Robert Reilly

A debate now rages over whether the American Proposition will be defeated by its own DNA flaws from the get-go or will recover its foundational principles, which have been roundly ignored and unconsulted.
Let’s just say historian and social critic Robert R. Reilly, author of America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, does not hold to the former. Here he delves deeply into the Founder’s official documents, the worldview they held, and the ideas they drew upon to frame the turbulent beginnings of the country.

In this episode you will learn

• The world before the War of Independence and the writing of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
• The Catholic sources of political philosophy that inspired Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Franklin et al
• Why the framers envisioned only a moral and virtuous people as they only possible populace for the Republic to succeed long term
• How to debunk the myth that the framers were mainly Masonic deists
• Why the Book of Genesis is the biblical text that opens up the worldview that made America possible
• The ways in which culture is upstream from politics and what to do about it

Resources mentioned in this episode

• America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding by Robert Reilly
• Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything by Robert Reilly
• Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome by Timothy Gordon

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