America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding

The Founding of the American Republic is being fired upon from all sides today. Some say that the United States was founded on slavery, racism, and white-male privilege, which must be dismantled. Others say it was based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical autonomy, which has caused the country's moral and social degradation. In this well-researched book, Robert R. Reilly shows that a combination of ideas from Judaism, Greek philosophy, and Christianity inspired the writers of the U.S. Constitution, who rejected both absolute freedom along with absolute rule. He demonstrates that the cause of America's decline is not to be discovered in the Founding principles, but in the rejection of those principles. Reilly traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the oneness of God, the goodness and the orderliness of creation, and the need for freedom to be guided by reason. These concepts were further developed by Christian think- ers in the Middle Ages; and while they may seem a long way from the American Founding, Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock.