FREE to THRIVE

In his essay The Absolute Truth of America’s Founding Principles (published in The American Mind), Bradley Thompson writes: “this is not the time to fight over whether the founding was Hobbesian, Lockean, Aristotelian, or something else.” Wrong‼️ If you don’t understand those fundamental distinctions in OPERATION - you are no upholder and defender of the Constitutional Republic. There is no excuse for not knowing why and how such a statement operationally negates the Republic. There is a duty to know how and why this is so. None of this is intellectual academic armchair debate. It is the distinction between whether unalienable rights, self evident truths and self governance (what the Founders established and codified in the Declaration of Independence) is upheld and defended (or not!) in operation, by those swearing an oath to defend the Constitution and by self governing citizens throughout civic infrastructure in their professional capacities. Specific ontological and epistemological foundations uphold and defend what the Declaration established. Specific ontological and epistemological foundations negate and destroy that in operation. There is the obligation and responsibility to know the difference and to act on that in a way which does not violate those foundational first principles of the Declaration in operation.