Age of Enlightenment

It is said by some that the WWII generation was “The Greatest Generation”. Sorry Tom Brokaw, it was minuscule in comparison to The Age of Enlightenment. Compared to the generations of today maybe but there has never been anything that compares to that time of greats from about 1685 to 1815. These were renaissance men with math and science. The Age of Enlightenment was also known as the Age of Reason. Only a classical education of great minds could have produced this phenomenon.

European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was a time when man began to use his reason to discover the world, casting off the superstition and fear of the medieval world. ... Enlightenment thinkers examined the rational basis of all beliefs and in the process rejected the absolute authority of church and state.

Enlightened would-be revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, whose “Declaration of Independence” (1776) framed the American Revolution in terms taken from of John Locke’s essays.

The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.

Six Key Ideas. At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form.

Although there is no consensus about the exact span of time that corresponds to the American Enlightenment, it is safe to say that it occurred during the eighteenth century among thinkers in British North America and the early United States and was inspired by the ideas of the British and French Enlightenments.  Based on the metaphor of bringing light to the Dark Age, the Age of the Enlightenment (Siècle des lumières in French and Aufklärung in German) shifted allegiances away from absolute authority, whether religious or political, to more skeptical and optimistic attitudes about human nature, religion and politics.  In the American context, thinkers such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin invented and adopted revolutionary ideas about scientific rationality, religious toleration and experimental political organization—ideas that would have far-reaching effects on the development of the fledgling nation.  Some coupled science and religion in the notion of deism; others asserted the natural rights of man in the anti-authoritarian doctrine of liberalism; and still others touted the importance of cultivating virtue, enlightened leadership and community in early forms of republican thinking. At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form. It also stressed individualism over collectivism. Those who yearn for a Socialist State or a Democratic Socialist leaning need to understand that collectivism is incompatible with what the Framers set out. Collectivism is conducive to making sausage. We have a Constitutional Republic, devoid of a despotic monarch like George III.

The Enlightenment, sometimes called the 'Age of Enlightenment', was a late 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, individualism, and skepticism. The Enlightenment presented a challenge to traditional religious views. Enlightenment thinkers were the liberals of their day.

Can you even consider putting Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell on stage with these men? I would put Pelosi as a chamber pot maid and Mitch McConnell as a stall mucker or maybe carriage attendant. Think too of these presidential candidates now lining up at the trough. I think more along the lines of the Bowery Boys or Little Rascals rather than Enlightened. Reason and enlightened thought are simply beyond their reach. I will take our Constitution and leave these nincompoops to Barnum & Bailey.

McConnell is the product of the 17^th Amendment which should never have happened and must be repealed to make this Constitutional Republic whole again. That was the brain child of Woodrow Wilson, speaking of Democrat Socialists.

Thomas Paine may have been best known for “The Rights of Man”. It should be read, especially by those who tout the Democrat Socialist form of governments. Here’s a clue for you; neither Medicare for All nor a college education are a “Right”. In both cases, you get what you pay for. No national government is capable or responsible for providing either. Nowhere is it written that either is a Right of Man. Those are the prerogative of the States and/ or the People.