Principles of the secular enlightenment used to create the USA

The American Founders drew chiefly on the secular Enlightenment: reason as the only court of appeal, objective natural rights, and government limited to protecting those rights. 

Section 1 — Reason, reality, and secular legitimacy

• Primacy of reason: Political institutions must be designed by logical analysis of facts, not by tradition, revelation, or emotion. The Federalist Papers model this: arguments from human nature, incentives, and institutional cause-and-effect (e.g., Federalist 10 and 51).
• Sensory evidence and science: Knowledge comes from observation, experiment, and induction; Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams were men of science and statecraft alike. The Founders revered Bacon, Locke, and Newton as the makers of the “age of reason.”
• Secular foundation of government: Authority is not derived from a church. Civil rights are independent of religious opinion. Evidence: the First Amendment’s ban on establishment and protection of free exercise; Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) holding that civil rights do not depend on religious beliefs.
• The man-made vs. the metaphysically given: Nature’s laws are facts to be understood and used; political arrangements are man-made and must be judged by how well they align with reality and protect rights. Hence written constitutions, amendable by reasoned process.

Key sources: Jefferson, Notes and correspondence; The Federalist Nos. 1, 10, 51; Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786); Locke, Two Treatises (1689).

Section 2 — Objective natural rights and the moral purpose of government

• Inalienable individual rights: Life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are objective requirements of a rational being’s life, not grants from rulers. The Declaration: “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”
• Equality before the law, not equality of outcome: No legal privileges for birth or class; bans on titles of nobility (Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9–10). Justice requires uniform, objective law.
• Freedom of conscience and speech: The mind must be free to think, speak, publish, and associate; truth-seeking requires it. Evidence: First Amendment; Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance (1785).
• Non-initiation of force as political axiom: Force is justified only in retaliation against those who violate rights. Government’s proper function is police, courts, and national defense under objective law. Federalist 51 recognizes human fallibility and designs checks to minimize abuses of force.
• The pursuit of happiness as a secular moral end: The Founders replace duty-to-collective or salvation with an individual’s rational life as the moral standard. That is why property, contract, invention (patents/copyrights in the Constitution), and voluntary exchange are protected: they are instruments of a self-directed, productive life.

Key sources: Declaration of Independence (1776); Bill of Rights (1791); Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance (1785); Locke, Two Treatises (1689).

Section 3 — Constitutional architecture: limited, enumerated powers; separation of powers; federalism; objective law and due process

• Government as a limited agent by delegation

  • The Constitution is a grant of specifically enumerated powers; government has no rightful authority beyond those grants. Evidence: Article I, Section 8 (powers of Congress); Tenth Amendment (powers not delegated are reserved to the states or the people).
  • Officeholders are bound by oath to the Constitution (Article VI), i.e., to objective law, not personal or sectarian will.

• Separation of powers to prevent the concentration of coercion

  • Distinct legislative, executive, and judicial functions, with each checking the others to keep force under law. Evidence: Articles I–III; The Federalist Nos. 47–51 (“ambition must be made to counteract ambition”).
  • Bicameralism disciplines legislation through dual review with different constituencies and terms. Evidence: The Federalist Nos. 62–63.

• Checks and balances as practical safeguards

  • Presidential veto (Article I, Section 7), impeachment and removal (Articles I–II), Senate advice and consent on appointments and treaties (Article II, Section 2).
  • Judicial review to keep all branches within constitutional limits. Evidence: The Federalist No. 78 (judiciary as “judgment” not “force or will”); formalized in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

• Federalism: divided sovereignty for liberty

  • The federal government has enumerated powers; states retain general police powers subject to rights and constitutional supremacy. Evidence: Article I, Section 8; Tenth Amendment; Supremacy Clause (Article VI) applying only to laws “made in Pursuance” of the Constitution.
  • A national common market by removing internal trade barriers. Evidence: Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3); The Federalist No. 42.

• Rule of law and due process (objective law)

  • No bills of attainder or ex post facto laws (Article I, Sections 9–10); habeas corpus protected except in rebellion or invasion (Article I, Section 9).
  • Criminal procedure protections: jury trial (Article III, Section 2; Sixth Amendment), confrontation and counsel (Sixth), security of person and effects (Fourth), protection against self-incrimination and double jeopardy (Fifth), bans on excessive bail/fines and cruel and unusual punishments (Eighth).
  • Property rights anchored in due process and the Takings Clause: no deprivation of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and just compensation for public use (Fifth Amendment).
  • Treason is narrowly defined to prevent political abuse of force (Article III, Section 3).

• War and fiscal powers constrained by rights

  • Congress declares war, raises and supports armies with appropriation limits, and provides for a navy; the President is Commander in Chief but under law (Articles I–II). This divides war powers to prevent unilateral militarized coercion.
  • Taxing and spending powers exist to carry out enumerated ends; appropriations and audits are under legislative control (Article I, Sections 8–9).

• Rights as limits, not permissions

  • The Bill of Rights places absolute boundaries on governmental action in speech, press, conscience, assembly, petition (First Amendment), self-defense (Second), security of the home (Third/Fourth), criminal justice (Fifth–Eighth), and the reservation/retention clauses (Ninth–Tenth).
  • Intellectual property recognizes the product of the mind as property for limited terms to incentivize invention and authorship (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8).

• Amendability without arbitrariness

  • Article V provides a supermajoritarian process to correct errors and refine the framework—acknowledging that political structures are man-made and must be adjustable, but only by objective, rule-bound procedure.

Key sources: U.S. Constitution (Articles I–III, V, VI; Bill of Rights); The Federalist Nos. 10, 42, 47–51, 62–63, 78; Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Section 4 — Economic liberty and capitalism: property, contract, free trade, and the moral case for markets

• Property rights and contract as the legal engine of production

  • Constitutional anchors: Due Process and Takings (Fifth Amendment), Contract Clause (Article I, Section 10), and Intellectual Property Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8). These establish objective, enforceable claims to one’s productive results and to voluntary agreements.
  • Early jurisprudence entrenching security of contract and property: Fletcher v. Peck (1810) and Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) limited state interference with vested rights and contracts.
  • Land policy aimed at private ownership and orderly markets: Land Ordinance of 1785 and Northwest Ordinance (1787) surveyed, sold, and protected land titles—turning wilderness into capital via clear, transferable rights.

• A national common market under objective law

  • Interstate free trade: The Commerce Clause (Art. I, Sec. 8), bans on state imposts/duties (Art. I, Sec. 10), and the Export Tax prohibition (Art. I, Sec. 9) prevent internal protectionism and establish one national market. Federalist 11 and 42 argue for commercial union; Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) enforced it by voiding state monopolies that obstruct interstate commerce.
  • Uniform rules that lower transaction costs: federal power over bankruptcy, weights and measures, post offices/roads, and patents (Art. I, Sec. 8) reduces uncertainty and facilitates enterprise, credit, and nationwide trade.

• Sound money and credit as preconditions for long-range planning

  • Constitutional monetary framework: Congress coins money and regulates its value (Art. I, Sec. 8); states may not issue bills of credit nor make anything but gold and silver coin legal tender (Art. I, Sec. 10). The Coinage Act of 1792 established a commodity-money standard (gold/silver), enabling reliable long-term contracts.
  • Economic principle (Reisman, Capitalism): Stable, non-inflationary money protects saving and capital accumulation. Chronic inflation—via paper issues and credit expansion—redistributes wealth arbitrarily, distorts prices and profit-and-loss signals, and undermines calculation.

• Freedom of production and voluntary exchange

  • Rights in action: the liberty to produce, set prices and wages by agreement, choose one’s employment, and form businesses without prior restraint—subject only to laws against force and fraud. This flows from the rights to life, liberty, and property (Declaration; Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process as later extensions).
  • Objective law over economic life: bans on bills of attainder and ex post facto laws; jury trials; uniform bankruptcy—all protect entrepreneurs and investors against arbitrary coercion, enabling rational risk-taking.

• Capital accumulation, productivity, wages, and profits (Reisman’s core economics)

  • Causal mechanism: Real wages rise as capital per worker rises. Additional capital (tools, machines, structures, knowledge embodied in processes) multiplies labor’s productivity, enlarging the supply of goods relative to labor effort, thereby raising real incomes.
  • Role of saving: Net saving finances capital formation; taxes that fall on profits and saving, and inflation that erodes cash balances, slow capital accumulation and depress future real wages.
  • Nature of profit and interest: They are payments for coordinating production across time and uncertainty, not “deductions” from wages. Wages are a primary cost of business; profits emerge only if entrepreneurs integrate prices, costs, and technology more efficiently than alternatives. Interventions like price controls and “excess profits” penalties cripple this coordinating function and lead to shortages and malinvestment.

• Trade policy and the case for free trade

  • Founding architecture centralized external trade to avoid interstate tariff wars (Art. I, Sec. 8; Art. I, Sec. 10). While early federal tariffs largely raised revenue, the principle consistent with rights is freedom of production and trade—domestic and international—because it allows the division of labor and price signals to allocate resources by comparative efficiency.
  • Economic law (Reisman): Tariffs and quotas forcibly divert production from higher- to lower-productivity uses, raise consumer prices, shrink real wages, and waste capital. Free trade expands the real supply of goods and opens larger markets for domestic producers.

• Intellectual property as protection of the mind’s product

  • The Constitution protects inventors and authors (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 8), recognizing that innovation is a primary driver of capital accumulation and productivity. Objective, time-limited exclusive rights align legal rewards with the creation of value.

• The moral case: justice to producers and the non-initiation of force

  • Rights are moral principles sanctioning freedom of action in a social context. The proper function of government is to ban the initiation of force and enforce objective law (police, courts, national defense), leaving production and trade to voluntary consent.
  • Capitalism is the only system that treats the individual as an end in himself, protects the earned from the unearned, and ties gain to production. Sacrifice-by-law—redistribution, compelled “service,” or protectionism—rewards nonproduction at producers’ expense and violates rights.

Key sources:

• U.S. Constitution: Art. I, Secs. 8–10; Amend. V; IP Clause; Bankruptcy; Weights and Measures; Coinage. Declaration of Independence.
• The Federalist Papers Nos. 11, 42 (commerce), 44 (bills of credit).
• Coinage Act of 1792; Land Ordinance (1785); Northwest Ordinance (1787).
• Early cases: Fletcher v. Peck (1810); Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819); Gibbons v. Ogden (1824).
• George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996): on capital accumulation and real wages; profits/interest as coordinators; monetary stability; the harm of tariffs, price controls, taxation of saving.

Here are the key Enlightenment (and proto-Enlightenment) thinkers most used by the American Founders, grouped for clarity. I list names only.

Core natural-rights and natural-law lineage

• Richard Hooker
• Hugo Grotius
• Samuel Pufendorf
• Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui
• Emer de Vattel
• John Locke
• Algernon Sidney
• James Harrington

Constitutional structure and liberty

• Montesquieu
• David Hume

Common-law authorities

• Edward Coke
• William Blackstone

Scottish Enlightenment and moral philosophy

• Francis Hutcheson
• Thomas Reid
• Adam Smith
• John Witherspoon

Political economy and liberal reform

• Adam Smith
• Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot
• Marquis de Condorcet

Religious liberty and dissenting Whiggism

• Joseph Priestley
• Richard Price

Criminal justice and proportionality

• Cesare Beccaria

Science and the method of reason (intellectual backdrop)

• Francis Bacon
• Isaac Newton

Republican and liberty literature (widely read in the colonies)

• Thomas Paine
• John Trenchard
• Thomas Gordon (Cato’s Letters)