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To: ConservingFreedom

The right wing of the American Revolution saw itself as restoring traditional English rights of Americans. The left wing believed in universalism. I side with the Federalists like Washington over the Jacobin lovers.


21 posted on 07/22/2014 9:55:35 PM PDT by rmlew ("Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers.")
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To: rmlew
Doesn't sound like the essentialist Right has much to do with anything that could reasonably be called American conservatism: 'the US was founded in the eighteenth-century as a liberal republic and does not have what Burke called an “ancient constitution” similar to the one found in Europe. The social world that gave birth to classical conservatism was a lot more ancient or medieval than the society that American conservatives set out to defend.'

The right wing of the American Revolution saw itself as restoring traditional English rights of Americans.

I agree - but I think they understood themselves to be accomplishing that end by means of creating a form of government that was new, albeit leaning on English common law and informed by history. If "American conservatism" means anything, it means conserving that then-new creation.

24 posted on 07/23/2014 6:30:17 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom (A goverrnment strong enough to impose your standards is strong enough to ban them.)
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