American Enterprise Institute

Natural Rights, the Common Good, and the American Revolution

Humility, Hubris, and the Pursuit of Happiness Notes

  1. Maegan Parker Brooks and Davis W. Houck, eds., The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like It Is (University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 62.
  2. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1, 1765–1769 (Clarendon Press, 1765), 40–41.
  3. Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America (Simon & Schuster, 2024), 6.
  4. Rod Gragg, Forged in Faith: How Faith Shaped the Birth of the Nation 1607–1776 (Howard Books, 2010), 156.
  5. Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (Forum Books, 2012), 301.
  6. Leszek Kolakowski, “The Idolatry of Politics,” lecture, 15th Annual Jefferson Lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC, May 7, 1986.
  7. Kolakowski, “The Idolatry of Politics.”
  8. James R. Zink, “The Language of Law and Liberty,” The American Political Science Review 103, no. 3 (2009): 442–43, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/language-of-liberty-and-law-james-wilson-on-americas-written-constitution/BDBA747B5508658594FB2CA482C7D7F8.
  9. Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice (Free Press, 1999), 146.
  10. Charles Murray, In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government (1988; Liberty Fund, 2013), 141.
  11. Ryan Rynbrandt, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” paper presented at the Western Political Science Association 2016 Annual Conference, San Diego, CA, March 25, 2016, https://www.wpsanet.org/papers/docs/rynbrandt.pdf.
  12. Rynbrandt, The Pursuit of Happiness, 246.
  13. Frederick Douglass, “Self-Made Men,” speech, Carlisle, PA, March 1893, 15, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss11879.29002/.
  14. Abraham Lincoln to Henry L. Pierce and Others, April 6, 1859, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-henry-pierce-and-others/.
  15. Calvin Coolidge, “The Inspiration of the Declaration,” speech, Philadelphia, PA, July 5, 1926, https://coolidgefoundation.org/resources/inspiration-of-the-declaration-of-independence/.
  16. Coolidge, “The Inspiration of the Declaration.”
  17. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1748),
    sec. 12, pt. 3, 132.
  18. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 84.
  19. Michael E. Aeschliman, The Restoration of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Continuing Case Against Scientism (Discovery Institute Press, 2019), 50–53.
  20. Jacob Bronowski, The Identity of Man (Natural History Press, 1965), 2.
  21. Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 2001), 131.
  22. Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (St. Augustine Press, 2008), 13.
  23. G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils (Cassell and Company, 1922), 77.
  24. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (Macmillan, 1947), 84–85.
  25. Thomas Howard, Chance or the Dance? A Critique of Modern Secularism (Ignatius Press, 2018), 134.
  26. Howard, Chance or the Dance?
  27. John Sexton, “A Reductionist History of Humankind,” The New Atlantis, Fall 2015, 110, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/a-reductionist-history-of-humankind.
  28. Aeschliman, The Restoration of Man, 45.
  29. C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (Simon & Schuster, 1996), 81–82.
  30. Nick Spencer, “Sapiens, Maybe; Deus, No: The Problem with Yuval Noah Harari,” ABC Australia, July 13, 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/the-problem-with-yuval-noah-harari/12451764.
  31. Spencer, “Sapiens, Maybe; Deus, No.”
  32. Homer, The Odyssey, bk. 18, lines 130–37.
  33. David Stove, What’s Wrong with Benevolence: Happiness, Private Property, and the Limits of Enlightenment (Encounter Books, 2011).
  34. Stove, What’s Wrong with Benevolence, 98.
  35. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Basic Books, 1977), 42–44.
  36. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 45.
  37. Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Harvill Secker, 2016).
  38. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief Human History of Mankind (Harper, 2015).
  39. Sexton, “A Reductionist History of Humankind.”
  40. James Poulos, “Big Tech: Sacred Culture or Cyborg Rapture,” in Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order, ed. Michael Walsh (Bombardier Books, 2022), 138.
  41. Justin Dyer, “The God of the Declaration,” James Wilson Institute, Anchoring Truths, July 4, 2022, https://www.anchoringtruths.org/the-god-of-the-declaration/.
  42. Dyer, “The God of the Declaration.”
  43. Dyer, “The God of the Declaration.”
  44. John Adams to the Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.
  45. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (HarperCollins, 2000), xvii.
  46. Gen. 1:3 (NIV).
  47. Heb. 2:7; and Ps. 8:5 (NIV).
  48. Paul Davies, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon & Schuster, 1992), 232.
  49. James Le Fanu, “Foreword,” in The Restoration of Man.
  50. George Washington, “The Rules of Civility,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/rules-of-civility?page=10.
  51. Abraham Lincoln, “Speech Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois,” speech, Springfield, IL, January 27, 1838, in John Gabriel Hunt, The Essential Abraham Lincoln (Gramercy, 1993), 8, 15.
  52. Samuel Johnson, “No. 2: The Necessity and Danger of Looking into Futurity,” The Rambler, March 24, 1750.
  53. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford University Press, 1958), 158–59.
  54. Aeschliman, The Restoration of Man, 66.
  55. Aeschliman, The Restoration of Man, 124.