"American Government is not an Authority; it has no control over individuals and no responsibility for their affairs. American Government is a permission which free individuals grant to certain men (sic) to use force in certain and strictly limited ways; a permission which Americans can always withdraw from American Government."
Proto-
Libertarian Rose Wilder Lane
quoted
here
" "Franklin could not help but admire the proud, simple life of America's native inhabitants," wrote Conner in Poor Richard's Politicks (1965). "There was a noble quality in the stories . . . which he told of their hospitality and tolerance, of their oratory and pride." Franklin, said Conner, saw in Indians' conduct "a living symbol of simplicity and 'happy mediocrity . . .' exemplifying essential aspects of the Virtuous Order." Depiction of this "healthful, primitive morality could be instructive for transplanted Englishmen, still doting on 'foreign Geegaws'; 'happiness,' Franklin wrote, 'is more generally and equally diffused among savages than in our civilized societies.'"
"Happy mediocrity" meant striking a compromise between the overcivilization of Europe, with its distinctions between rich and poor and consequent corruption, and the egalitarian, democratic societies of the Indians that formed a counterpoint to European monarchy. The Virtuous Order would combine both, borrowing from Europe arts, sciences, and mechanical skills, taking from the Indians aspects of the natural society that Franklin and others believed to be a window on the pasts of other cultures, including those from which the colonists had come. There is in the writings of Franklin, as well as those of Jefferson, a sense of using the Indian example to recapture natural rights that Europeans had lost under monarchy. The European experience was not to be reconstructed on American soil. Instead, Franklin (as well as Jefferson) sought to erect an amalgam, a combination of indigenous American Indian practices and the cultural heritage that the new Americans had carried from Europe. In discussing the new culture, Franklin and others drew from experience with native Americans, which was more extensive than that of the European natural rights philosophers. The American Indians' theory and practice affected Franklin's observations on the need for appreciation of diverse cultures and religions, public opinion as the basis for a polity, the nature of liberty and happiness, and the social role of property. American Indians also appear frequently in some of Franklin's scientific writings. At a time much less specialized than the twentieth century, Franklin and his associates (such as Colden and Jefferson) did not think it odd to cross from philosophy to natural science to practical politics. "
"In the sense that it was founded upon a bloody revolution, and in accordance with anti-Christian principles, yes."
"when the prestigious Library of America went in search of an editor for its new anthology of original historical documents--"The American Revolution: Writings from the War of Independence"--it settled on John Rhodehamel, the Huntington's Norris Foundation Curator of American History. ...
"All of these changes the revolution brought forth essentially created a modern world that had not existed before," he said. "To take just one example, you had this hierarchical society, where power and privilege ran up and down. That began to break up after the revolution, though the process was not complete until the 19th century. All that--what has been called 'the essential radicalism' of the American Revolution--is clear to us now but was utterly obscure to the participants at the time."
In other words, the revolution's very success in creating a fundamental break with the past now impedes 21st century readers from fully understanding the minds and sensibilities of intellects and characters formed before 1776. "To understand that aspect of the 18th century," said Rhodehamel, "requires something that is almost like a spiritual discipline." ...
"If you are at all familiar with Civil War literature," he said (Library of America publisher Max Rudin) , "you are bound to be struck by what's not there in the Revolutionary writing. These writers--whatever their station--have no sense of religious mission and no sense of religious reflection about their own experience. There are frequent references to liberty, honor and self-defense, but not that sense of religious mission and the language to support it that you find later in American writing. You definitely find the language of republicanism, but not the sort of public piety you find in contemporary accounts of the Civil War or--for that matter--of World War II.
"Whatever people today may want to believe," Rudin said, "they just weren't very religious -- at least not in the sense that we understand it."
"Here is what our Founding Fathers wrote about Bible-based Christianity ..."
"George W. Bush's presidency is the first faith-based administration in U.S. history.
The founding fathers did not mention God in the Constitution, and the faithful often regarded our early presidents as insufficiently pious."