America's Founding Secret: What the Scottish Enlightenment Taught Our Founding Fathers

by Robert W. Galvin

In the history of America's founding, the names of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and other founding fathers loom large. But few Americans today would recognize the role played by such men as Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart, David Hume, and other philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment.

In this book, Robert W. Galvin, retired Chairman of the Board of Motorola, Inc. and one of America's most respected corporate leaders, reminds us of the fundamental debt that our founding fathers and this nation owe to this extraordinary group of Scottish thinkers. In the Scottish Enlightenment, America's founders themselves found the philosophical underpinnings for a government conceived and defined with the intent to promote economic progress in commerce based on private capital means.

Concise and accessible, America's Founding Secret will forever change the way Americans look at their nation's beginnings and remind us again of the fundamental connection between private enterprise and freedom that remains at the heart of the American experiment.

140 pages, Hardcover

First published September 25, 2002

About the author

Robert William "Bob" Galvin was an American executive. He was the son of the founder of Motorola, Paul Galvin, and was the CEO of Motorola from 1959 to 1986.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a quick read that needs an editor. I’m not sure it’s a “secret” that the concepts which formed America’s constitution were largely influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, but there are some interesting points about Scottish history and the social environment in Scotland during the 16th-18th centuries that intentionally and unintentionally influenced America’s founding.

[Motorcycle Tourist · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Scottish Enlightenment (1720-1780) was the greatest collection of leading scholars from virtually all fields of knowledge working together in one location during a very compressed time. These scholars taught each other’s over pints of ale and the collective interdisciplinary wisdom of these men was refined with each passing year.

Scottish scholars were keenly aware that most nations had founded and afforded themselves by force. Scholars were starting to realize that commerce based on freedom would nurture virtue. For the first time in history, a government was conceived and designed with the purposeful intent as to its affordability by promoting economic progress in commerce based on private capital and thus the likely sustaining of a large republic and the freedom it espoused. None of the Scottish Enlightenment masters intended the founding of the US. Yet, individually and collectively their scholarship enabled America’s founding.

[Julz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short reading thus flow was missing. Could have developed ideas fuller into more interesting prose but this was no doubt due to length of book. Very interesting subject, shame it was short on what I was looking for.

[John]

nonfiction,history,enlightenment,political science,United States,Scotland,democracy theory