In the epilogue of C. Bradley Thompson’s monumental new book, America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It, Thompson observes:
We now live in a world wrought by the unidentified, unacknowledged union of proslavery and progressive thought.
That astounding claim is explored in C. Bradley Thompson on America’s Revolutionary Mind, an interview with Bob Zadek.* Thompson observes that the reactionary turn against the philosophical and moral underpinnings of the American Founding began with the Southern pro-slavery intellectuals in the 1830s, which was Southern slavocracy’s response to the emergence of the Abolitionist movement. Though the South lost the Civil War, and with it their slavocracy, the reactionary philosophical ideas that underpinned the Confederacy’s defense of slavery were picked up almost verbatim by the Progressive Movement that began in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and continue to this day.
The whole exchange is well worth reading, of course. But the part that begins with Bob Zadek’s first question under the section headed The Slow Erosion of Liberty is of particular interest because it is so relevant to the contemporary state of America. In effect, we are still fighting the fight started by the abolitionists.
* [Unfortunately, the editing is very poor in this article, and there are a lot of grammatical errors. But Thompson’s thought nevertheless comes through loud and clear.]
Related Reading:
From Thompson’s critique of Radical Left Progressivism and New Right Reactionism
So, this is where we are in 2020. Like antebellum Southern slaveholders and post-bellum Progressives, today’s radical Left and Right share a common disgust for the principles of the American Founding.
America’s Moral Mind by Timothy Sandefur
Hong Kong and the enduring value of the Declaration of Independence BY REV. BEN JOHNSON
[In Zadek’s interview, Thompson mentions that the Hong Kong protestors acted on the principles of the Declaration of Independence. In this report, Johnson demonstrates the link. This is not particularly surprising. The ideas of the Declaration are key to what Thompson called “the moral magnet [of] freedom” the world over, and which brought millions of immigrants to America’s shores in the 19th and 20th Centuries, and to this day.]
The Collectivist Left Appropriates an Inhumane Christian Doctrine to Obliterate Americanism
The 'New American Socialists' Dilemma: The Declaration is as much anti-Socialist as anti-Slavery
A New Textbook of Americanism — edited by Jonathan Hoenig
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