Show notes
Richard Reinsch:Welcome to Liberty Law Talk, I’m your host Richard Reinsch. Today, we’re talking with a special guest who’s returning to Liberty Law Talk, Robert Reilly. Robert Reilly is a man of many talents, many interests, he’s done a lot of wonderful things. He’s served in government for over two decades, special assistant to the President, and director of the Voice of America. He was senior advisor for information strategy to the Secretary of Defense, and he’s taught at the National Defense University. He’s the author of a number of books and essays, including the award-winning book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind. He is also a Viennese Waltzer. And, he told me one time in his earlier life, he was a stage actor. Was it a Shakespearean stage actor, I think? So Robert, we are glad to welcome you. Last time, we discussed the end of ISIS. Now, we will talk about your new book, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding. Welcome. Robert Reilly:Great, Richard. Thank you for doing this. Richard Reinsch:So Robert, thinking about the title of this book, America on Trial. America has been on trial throughout it’s history, it’s particularly been on trial the last 50 years with the new left, rejecting its claims, and recently with the 1619 Project, insisting that all of America is just a footnote to slavery, so this has been going on for quite a while. Why, specifically, did you write this book? What are the charges you see being leveled against the American founding? Robert Reilly:Well, I wrote this book because the very people who should be defending the principles of the American founding are attacking it. And some of those people might be known as conservative Christians, Catholics, and so forth, who should be the new Michael Novaks, who should be praising the principles of the American founding within the context of Judaeo-Christian civilization, Greek philosophy, and its noble lineage. I believe it’s the dimensions of the catastrophe today that lead people, almost desperately, in search of a cause of it. Who did this to us, who’s responsible for it? They’ve arrived at this peculiar notion that the American founding did it to us, that it was a poison pill with a time release formula. They’re not doing that, and the reason I think they’re not is because they need to answer the question, whose responsible? Who put us in the degraded moral condition in which the United States exists today, with widespread pornography, a flood of drugs, the dissolution of the family, same sex marriage? Now, the transgender nonsense. But, where has this come from, and why have we so largely succumbed to it? To the point that we’ve had Supreme Court decisions saying some of these things are guaranteed by the Constitution? Richard Reinsch:Guaranteed by the word liberty, in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, specifically. Robert Reilly:Well, and of course, by what Justice Anthony Kennedy called the autonomy of the individual, which is not something that is found in any of our founding documents, but fabricated by him. And then, of course for the legalization of same sex marriages. Now, the critics of the American founding on the Christian right are, basically, agreeing with Justice Kennedy, saying he’s right, the American founding was the product of a radical enlightenment thinking about the autonomy of the individual, and the perfectibility of the human being. Both of which notions are inimical to Christianity as it was practiced at that time, in the 18th Century, and indeed, is inimical to it today. I believe it’s the dimensions of the catastrophe today that lead people, almost desperately, in search of a cause of it. Who did this to us, who’s responsible for it? They’ve arrived at this peculiar notion that the American founding did it to us, that it was a poison pill with a time release formula. And, as we become less and less a Christian country, we conform more and more to these principles of radical enlightenment ideology. Richard Reinsch:What specifically is their claim, that in the American founding there are these principles of an unencumbered individualism? What do they cite, what do they list for that evidence? Robert Reilly:Well, that’s one of the interesting things. When I read their arguments in order to rebut them, they have very little to offer in textual evidence from the founding. The way they read the Declaration of Independence, and the way they read parts of the Federalist Papers are, I tried to show, completely wrongheaded. They misunderstand these texts, they get it wrong. Now, why do they do that so consistently? It’s because they’re looking through the wrong prism, and therefore they see the wrong thing. The prism is, basically, Hobbes, it’s a Hobbesian founding, and it is in this way. They take John Locke to be the primary influence on the founding, and of course, Locke was a big influence, and was mentioned from the pulpit in the state legislatures with frequency, he was broadly read. Now, they contend that John Locke was simply Thomas Hobbes with a smiley face. He was just a nicer version of Hobbes, with the same Hobbesian principles obtained in him, and therefore, leeched into the American founding through John Locke, and that’s why we are approximating a Hobbesian state today Richard Reinsch:When you say Hobbes with a smiley face, can you describe that more for us? Robert Reilly:Well, it’s that they would say the idea of a contract to which man consents in the foundation of a similar political order is based on nothing other than his will. Richard Reinsch:Okay. Robert Reilly:That it makes the will primary in political order, and it is not geared to any natural law or natural right. Even though those terms are used, they’re evacuated of their meaning. If you just strip those away, you see what’s really there, which is the Primacy of the Will. What I try to show in my book is that those statements of Locke are grounded in a great tradition. The first tradition in which it’s grounded most immediately is the thought of Thomas Hooker, and his laws of ecclesiastical policy. Hooker, as you know, was a powerful 16th Century thinker, he was a priest, and he was the first theologian of the Anglican church. What Hooker was facing was the radical Puritan thought at the time, which was against human laws, thought that the laws on England should be abolished, and we should be ruled only by the Bible. By the way, when you translate the Primacy of the Will politically, you ineluctably get Hobbes’ Leviathan. That’s what Hobbes does, he shows us what that means in a political order of absolute power of the Leviathan. But, that’s not what you get from Locke, you get an entirely different kind of democratic Constitutional order, based on the equality of all men, representation, the requirement of consent, and the right to revolution, the right to tyrannicide. All of these things, of course, aren’t present in Hobbes. Richard Reinsch:You also make the point in the book … I mean, I can find certain disturbing passages in Locke, that I think are nominalist, or seem to be admitting of, let’s say, certain individualistic tendencies. But, you make the point, which I think is well taken, that the founders read and used Locke as statesmen, themselves. They used him in a political constitutional sense of independence and limited government, not in a full anthropological, theological, epistemological manner that is alleged by thinkers like Michael Hanby or Patrick Deneen. Robert Reilly:That’s right. This was not an adoption of Locke’s epistemology and his letter on human understanding, it’s his second discourse on government. They took from Locke his very powerful arguments against the divine right of kings, and the absolute state. What I try to show in my book is that those statements of Locke are grounded in a great tradition. The first tradition in which it’s grounded most immediately is the thought of Thomas Hooker, and his laws of ecclesiastical policy. Hooker, as you know, was a powerful 16th Century thinker, he was a priest, and he was the first theologian of the Anglican church. What Hooker was facing was the radical Puritan thought at the time, which was against human laws, thought that the laws on England should be abolished, and we should be ruled only by the Bible. Everything else was superfluous He wrote against this, quite powerfully, and did so by resuscitating both Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, particularly the Medieval articulation of the limits of political power, and the equality of men has a right to consent in representation, et cetera., and the respective spiritual and political realms, which are not coterminous. It’s hearkening back to the two swords teaching, that you give to feast the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s, which had been instantiated so completely in the Middle Ages. So, Hooker saved those things, let’s say he saved the reformation from itself by using Aristotle and Aquinas against the radical Puritan thinking. Locke quoted Hooker more often than anyone, regarding these basic things. Richard Reinsch:You note in the book, too, you said on this constitutional thinking, saying constitutional in a capacious sense, across the centuries of unwritten tradition that forms the American founding. You situate Locke, Hooker, Robert Bellarmine, 16th Century Jesuit, Francisco Suarez, another 16th Century Jesuit. These are thinkers who are, in many ways, in touch with a tradition that stretches across the centuries, urging the King is under law, basic notions of political consent, ideas of right of revolution, potentially. You show that this actually forms, or is recovered by, the American founding. The American founding is not, as you say, Hobbes with a smiley face, or individualism run amok, it’s a part of a grand tradition. Robert Reilly:Yes, absolutely. You will find articulations of these basic principles in those thinkers, that they come right out of the American founding. Richard Reinsch:You listed them. You have pages where you list parts of the Declaration, and how they mirror things in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and how they mirror what Bellarmine, and Suarez, and Hooker were saying earlier. I mean, I thought that was incredible. Robert Reilly:Yes. They sound like paraphrases of each other, don’t they? Richard Reinsch:Yes, definitely. Robert Reilly:Then, also let’s not forget Algernon Sidney, and his discourses on government. He, too, relied on Hooker a great deal, but he also acknowledged Suarez and Bellarmine. The reason he, more or less, had to do that is that the book defending the divine right of kings, written by Robert Filmer called Patriarcha, was basically addressed to the arguments made by Bellarmine and Suarez, and it was an attempt at refutation of them. Filmer was an honest enough writer that he would take large chunks out of Bellarmine and say, “Here’s what the schoolmen say, the scholastics. And, here’s what I say, and here’s what Suarez says.” He quotes Bellarmine the most, Suarez the second. When Sydney’s writing his refutation of Patriarcha, he grudgingly acknowledges Bellarmine, a hard thing for a Protestant to say, “This Catholic Cardinal’s got it right.” And he says, “But Bellarmine really is doing nothing but expressing the commonsense of mankind.” Which is no slight on Bellarmine, because that’s what Bellarmine himself says he’s doing. Because they’re all appealing to the same tradition of natural law as against the supremacy, the absolute supremacy of the state, whether it’s articulated in a totally secular way, as it was with Locke, or in the Divine Right of Kings way, as it was by James the First, or Robert Filmer. The thing is, the absolute state as it appeared in the 17th Century, was something new. It was totally alien to the entire Medieval mindset, as it denied all the basic constitutional principles which had been developed at that time. As you just mentioned a little earlier, Richard, indeed my book makes the case that the American founding is a return to those principles, it’s a restoration of them. So, you can’t see it just simply as a creature of the radical enlightenment, when it is grounded in this great tradition. What are the ideas that make the American founding conceivable, and from where did they come? What ideas do you need to have to conceive of such a thing, a political enterprise such as the American founding? That’s what I tried to trace. It, of course, predates Locke by millennia. Richard Reinsch:You know, a lot of people, I think, would say you seem to be switching categories, or switching received wisdom here. Isn’t it the Medieval period that’s the problem, and the enlightenment is a solution? When we say there’s a recovery here, of Medieval principles, what are specifically … maybe we can talk a bit about those Medieval principles. And, are we talking about England, primarily? Robert Reilly:Well, England, no, no we’re not except later on. Richard Reinsch:But, that’s what’s going to be most important, immediately. Robert Reilly:Yeah, but England withstood some of the absolute trends and tendencies that took over on the continent, which were under Roman law, and England chose not to go with Roman law which is one reason why freedom was preserved there, to a greater extent. Let me just give a little larger perspective of the book, Richard. The question the book asks is, what are the ideas that make the American founding conceivable, and from where did they come? What ideas do you need to have to conceive of such a thing, a political enterprise such as the American founding? That’s what I tried to trace. It, of course, predates Locke by millennia. As you know, I start in pre-philosophic man, to show what that looked like, and we go through the significance of the discovery of Greek philosophy, of universal truths and principles, the revolutionary revelation of Israel, of monotheism, of a transcendent God who creates ex nihilo, and makes man in his own image and likeness, extraordinary in the sea of polytheism that the Jewish people adhered to, this teaching that there is only one God. The significance of that, with Greek philosophy, as both came to be assimilated in Christianity, is extraordinary. And, as I talked about Greek philosophy, as you know, including the pre-Socractics, they wondered … First of all, we observed that there is an order in creation, there’s an order in nature. It’s a rational order, and with our reason we seem able to apprehend it. Now, where did this rational order come from? The speculation is there must be a divine intelligence behind it, it must be a manifestation of a divine intelligence. Richard Reinsch:Plato reaches that verdict. Robert Reilly:Plato reaches that, but before him, Heraclitus does, too. Because I believe it’s Heraclitus or Anaximander who first uses the word logos to describe this divine intelligence that is responsible for the rational order in creation and for man’s reason. Logos, of course, as you know, the Greek word for reason, or speech. Or, that’s the way they spoke of it, which makes intelligible the gospel of Saint John, when he says, “In the beginning, was logos. In the beginning was the word, and the logos was with God, and the word was God, and all things are made through Him as logos.” Which means that now we know why we have a rational creation, because the creator is, Himself, this reason logos. With the added astonishment, can you imagine if Heraclitus, having speculated on logos, met Him coming through the door? Then, indeed is Christ, entering his creation. But, this logos is not simply logos, the mystery of man, who we know is made in the image and likeness of God, the mystery of man is revealed in the infinite love of Christ. I would say our civilization is based on Genesis, that man is made in the image and likeness of God. That is the source of our conception of human rights. Richard Reinsch:Yeah. It’s difficult to argue ho…
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