"The Revolutionary Era stands as the most important period in America's history. During the span of just one generation, the Founding Fathers secured their newly-won liberty by establishing a government based explicitly on moral ideas and not on the accidents or mysteries of the past. In the states and at the national level, the principle of individual rights became firmly rooted at the base of the world's freest nation.
"The importance of America's Founding Era, however, includes both that generation's positive accomplishments and its errors and shortcomings. The Constitution and Bill of Rights provided the country with a firm foundation and fostered the prosperity of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the contradictions and omissions in the thinking of America's Founders—particularly in the field of morality—provided an opening through which later philosophic corruption could enter American life and attack the very principles that made America great....
"To return America to its original foundation of freedom and individual rights, it is vital that we know the ideas of the men who created that system.... To prevent further corrosion of our Revolutionary Era legacy, it is imperative that we know how to locate and repair the gaps left by our Enlightenment statesmen.
"This important task will be easier thanks to a recently reprinted book, John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty, by C. Bradley Thompson.... Readers interested in the Founding period and its legacy for our own time will not want to miss this book."
From "Philosopher of the Founding," by Eric Daniels, November 2003.
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