Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

More from Scott McDermott's "Charles Carroll of Carrollton":

According to the Saxon myth, the English constitution was born among the Gothic tribes described by Tacitus. There Germanic tribesmen had supposedly elected their kings, as well as a witenagemot, or parliament...Modern historians portray Saxon society as a primitive feudalism, not a nascent republic. In fact, warrior chieftains lived off the labor of peasants. Constitutional government originated in Christendom, not among the pre-Christian goths.

The most influential exponent of the Saxon myth in America was Thomas Jefferson, who called Tacitus "the first writer in the world." Jefferson always preferred Rapin's [pro Saxon myth] history to Hume's.

John Adams, on the other hand, had no time for Saxon reveries. It is true that he could never bring himself to accept dogmatic Christianity. "An incarnate God!!!" he once exclaimed. "An eternal, self-existent, omnipotent, omniscient, author of this stupendous universe, suffering on a cross!!! My soul starts with horror at this idea, and it has stupefied the Christian world." But Adams saw clearly that the basis of politics had to be the natural law. English liberties were nothing other than these "rights of nature" which were "antecedent to all earthly government."

...Essentially, the revolutionaries were rediscovering the Catholic political tradition, based in natural law, with its emphasis on the common good, corporatism, hierarchy, subsidiarity, and popular sovereignty. Because most of the founding fathers came from unorthodox religious backgrounds, they distorted the concept of natural law, generally in the direction of individualism. Americans still live with the consequences of these distortions. Nevertheless, the American reinvention of Catholic political thought - for such it was - is a great achievement. The United States created the first government in history of the world that is explicitly based in natural law.