This is the first Independence Day in recent memory that fell on a Thursday, thus giving the week more of a Thanksgiving Day rhythm than the typical federal holiday pattern of a three-day weekend. Which is to say that life appears to be slow on Internet and the street.
So while we Yanks are still in an autonomous mood, here are a few more considerations about Calvinism and the American Revolution. Paul Helm offers a minor correction to the point made here that American colonial Calvinists were likely following John Locke more than John Calvin. His conclusion is sufficiently mild that Christian nationalists and 2kers might both claim Helm’s agreement:
Yet it can be argued that for all his personal conservatism, there were, in Calvin’s view of civil society, enough chinks and fissures through which a case for rebellion against civic injustice could be developed. Calvin himself was certainly not an advocate of rebellion. Far from it. But what of those who came after? That this is the road that some Calvinists trod can be seen from Quentin Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Volume 2: The Age of Reformation.
Whatever Calvin taught, and however later Calvinists justified their politics, some scholars have actually looked at the citations of the American founders to see which authors they were reading and following. Almost thirty years ago, Donald Lutz came up with the following scorecard:
1. Montesquieu
8.3%
2. Blackstone
7.9
3. Locke
2.9
4. Hume
2.7
5. Plutarch
1.5
6. Beccaria
1.5
7. Trenchard & Gordon
1.4
8. Delolme
1.4
9. Pufendorf
1.3
10. Coke
1.3
11. Cicero
1.2
12. Hobbes
1.0
Everyone else on Lutz’s list of 36 “Most Cited Thinkers” comes in at less than one percent. For those curious, Calvin did not make the cut. (I have to admit that some of these names were obscure to me, hence the links. For the record, Delolme and Beccaria find no results at American Creation, while Trenchard & Gordon do. Our smart guy TVD is not responsible for the posts on T&G.)
Lutz also compares the Federalists and Anti-Federalists in their citations of groups of authors. The Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Adams) cited Enlightenment figures 34% of the time, Whigs 23%, and Classical 33%. They did not cite the Bible.
In contrast, the Anti-Federalists (who? i.e., Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Luther Martin) cited the Bible 9% of the time, Enlightenment 38%, Whig 29%, and Classical 9%.
No smoking guns here, but maybe a few matters to ponder while smoking a stogie on the hammock.
Old Life 