Vital Remnants: America's Founding and the Western Tradition

by Gary L. Gregg II (Editor), Bruce S. Thornton, Wilfred M. McClay

The insistence on America's freedom from tradition is itself an American tradition. However, this new volume presents another view, one in which the American ordo is not as new as we suppose. Vital Remnants explores the origins of the American experience in ordered liberty and finds that the taproot of our constitutional order is sunk deep into the history of the West.
America's founding generation was learned in the history and literature of the West and steeped in the English tradition of liberty. Vital Remnants revisits for a new generation the sources of America's greatness and suggests means to restore our weakened foundations.

Genres: American History

347 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1999

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for everyone who wants to understand why our Pioneer ancestors and our founding fathers were able to make our nation so great.

If we are to have any hope of preserving our freedom for ourselves and our posterity, read this book and begin to apply the principles of "Georgics" in your own life and family!

There are two opposing views of nature: Pastoral (Nature is beautiful and for leisure, recreation, etc) and Georgic (nature is harsh and dangerous, and we are to order it and make it productive) Georgics is about learning hard work, self-reliance, accountability, responsibility, the law of the harvest, moderation, character, temperance, duty, etc, etc....the list goes on. These lessons can be gleaned only by working the land and having a connection with "Natural law" in the outdoor world. Nothing else can replace it.

People all over our country, even though they haven't read this book, sense that these principles are true, and there is a demographic shift in our current day to try and recover our lost Georgic values.