this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Just a tiny push-back here: The political philosophy of the founding of America did depend on the 18th Enlightenment, but it also has roots in the 17th century Protestantism of the English Civil War.
Specifically ideals like "Equality before the State", separation of Church and State, and universal (male) suffrage, have a direct through-line to anti-monarchist, anti-Catholic, radical Puritanism.
I'm no David Barton, but America didn't fall out of a coconut tree.
But even (and especially) those religious founders influenced by the puritans saw the wisdom of the separation of church and state. They remembered when the religious English and Scottish states persecuted them.
On the shoulders of giants. Everything builds from the past, successes and failures. The colonies might have continued to endure their hardships even longer if it wasn't for one more giant's writings, Thomas Paine.