[snarkpup]

From a couple of America's Founding Grandfathers:

Great bodies of men have seldom judged what they ought to do, by any other rule than what they could do. What nation is there that has not oppressed any other, when the same could be done with advantage and security? What party has ever had regard to the principles which they professed, or ever reformed the errors which they condemned? What company, or particular society of merchants or tradesmen, has ever acted for the interest of general trade, though it always filled their mouths in private conversation?

And yet men, thus formed and qualified, are the materials for government. For the sake of men it is instituted, by the prudence of men it must be conducted; and the art of political mechanism is, to erect a firm building with such crazy and corrupt materials.

—Cato's Letters #61, by John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon.

We're still the same species and human nature is still the same.

[MosesKnows]

We're still the same species and human nature is still the same

If this is true, and I believe it is, it means the Progressive Movement bases itself on a falsehood.

[Jacquerie]

It was through one of Bernard Bailyn's books a few years ago that I learned of Trenchard and Gordon's Cato's Letters. What a hoot! Those two stuck it to an incredibly corrupt English government that almost destroyed the kingdom via South Sea stock euphoria.

More importantly, it was through Cato's Letters that colonial Americans learned the lessons of Locke and Sidney.

Thanks to Cato's Letters, by 1776 the philosophical concepts and maxims of the Declaration of Independence were old hat.