7 The breakdown of the Enlightenment project
The French Revolution leads to the Reign of Terror, leads to Napoleon.
Marx. Materialism. The disasterous experiments of state authoritarian socialism. Soviet, Chinese, etc.
This history requires analysis: how did the Enlightenment promise of governance through human reason lead to such humanity-crushing disaster?
What were the key errors?
Contrast: JFK: “Ask what you can do for your country.” vs Reagan: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
The Republican program since at least 1980 has been a sustained assault on the very idea of community, of the common good.
Claim: A social contract alone cannot bind a nation together. An enduring nation must be bound together by a social covenant.
And in a truly democratic nation, the terms of the social covenant must be developed collaboratively, not imposed from on high.