Richard Reinsch’s Version of Our Postmodern Yet Conservative Founding

Read it here .

It’s a lot like my version. But it adds Jim Stoner’s semi-Thomistic Declaration to the mix—a fine addition.

The idea of ORDERED LIBERTY as the compromise behind our Declaration’s compromise is also a compelling addition.

Trditionalists, Darwinians, and polis-enviers might be too much about ORDER.

Lockeans, libertarians, Rawlsians, transhumanists, and such are too much about LIBERTY.

The ORDER that structures our LIBERTY comes from our PERSONAL lives. We are both free and relational all the way down. We aren’t citizens—or parts of the whole call the city—all the way down. And so we postmodern conservatives (and for that matter our Founders) don’t speak of some American REGIME. To be relational is different from being social; we are in some ways like but in other ways different from the other EUSOCIAL (see E.O. Wilson) animals. The neo-Darwinian distinction between INDIVIDUAL and GROUP (or the libertarian distinction between INDIVIDUAL and THE COLLECTIVE) can’t capture being relational.

So both our DARWINIANS and our LOCKEANS are wrong in what the say about our impersonal natures. The LOGOS of created nature is PERSONAL, as our compromise Declaration says.