THE FOUNDERS' FOUNDER:

David Hume was a "public spirit" man through and through, and wrote reflectively, systematically, and widely to this end. He left a body of substantial work that effectively combats the age of dictatorial rationalism from a secular vantage point. Hume's writings provided political guidance, social security, and economic direction for America's Founding Fathers as they created a constitution (with all its flaws) for a new and more just Republic. Hume's ideas, which were so influential to the colonials can still provide guardrails for contemporary American political discourse. David Hume's influence in the shaping of American political society from its very beginning codification will be shown and his benefit for contemporary American society to preserve our union will become evident.

In eighteenth-century America, Hume's seminal works were read by college students and young leaders throughout the colonies. The colonials wrote in Humean phraseology, presumably to those who also understood Hume's thought. Hume's notions of experience and skepticism, the uniformity of human nature, commerce, culture, factions, interests, customs, social institutions, and most importantly, the "science of politics," were avidly studied, absorbed, and promulgated by the leading colonial minds. As Jeffry Morrison put it, "the ideas and language of Hume were in the colonial air."

Hume's political writings fit the pragmatic temper of the new Americans. From every state at the Constitutional Convention his ideas found purchase in the delegates' debates, letters, and essays. What the Founding Fathers found attractive in Hume was his Scottish common sense, and his freedom from political and religious mysticism and convictions. Hume's powerful practical intellect grounded in experience resulted in political compromise, the art of the experience. It is no paradox that Americans have always continued to have faith in their religion but skepticism in their politics. That is, we Americans expect our religion to be metaphysical, but we expect our politicians to be very physical. Thus, there is a sense in which Hume's religious "mitigated skepticism" has its political application in the American civil experience.

Due to Hume's influence, it is the American custom to believe that there are no easy answers to social problems, there are no honest politicians, and there is no place in America for political ideologues. Until now. Americans love their religion and despise their politicians. David Hume's foundational influence in original American political thought and action is still operative in constitutional America. He is still a key to unlock the dangers of contemporary political "imagination" run amuck.

Boston attorney and Founding Father James Otis wrote in support of Humean experience as guiding one's thinking, "what happened yesterday will come to pass again, and the same causes will produce like effects in all ages" since the laws of nature are "uniform and invariable." Bernard Bailyn asserts that experience was the "basic presupposition of the eighteenth-century history and political theory." Hume was just the pied piper of custom being the guide to understanding. For Hume and the early Americans, experience was not just a personal guide; it was a dependable political guide as well. Custom is king!

Hume's emphasis on the value of convention and custom, expressed in "great orders and societies," is important because it is only through felicitous social arrangements that the individual's rights can be preserved against governmental arrangements. He also insists on an innate moral human nature from somewhere rather than a morality from a supreme Being, and therefore warrants continued attention on the great skeptic's importance in our secular age. As regards metaphysics, Hume had a hesitant appreciation for Calvinism and the need for a transcendental perspective in human social life which, if handled properly, can provide social stability and prosperity.

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