FirstPrinciples
First Principles (Thomas Ricks)
- Fast read, solid start. Petered out at the end.
- George Washington's ability to observe and learn is underappreciated.
- Masons designing gridlock into the American system is also underappreciated.
- Three great Roman role models: Cato Fabius Cincinnatus
- Scots again and again played a major role in colonial American education.
- "How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negros?" - Samuel Johnson
- Epicureanism pervades the most significant sections of the Declaration of Independence
- The classical world was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution than it is to us today.
- For the revolutionary generation, virtue was the essential element of public life.
- For the revolutionary generation, Rome was much more important than Athens. They say Spartans as plainspoken, simple, free, and stable. while they disparaged the Athenians as turbulent, fictionalized and flighty. Cicero enjoyed a far higher profile in their world than he does in ours.
- Washington according to Jeffersion: "Prudent, considerate, careful, determined, honest, and inflexible" Washington as the American Cato.
- Washington was a man of deeds not words.
As circumstances change, be ready to change views and abandon assumptions. Listen to dissenters and know how to weight alternatives. Lessons learned by Washington.
- Scotland's influence on American history was profound and remains underappreciated.
- One measure of the significance of a new idea is the degree to which it spurs new thinking in other areas.
- Xenophon's Anabasis is an account of the retreat of Greek mercenaries from what is now central Iraq to the Black Sea, after being hired to fight on the wrong side of Persian civil war.
Epicureanism according to Jeffersion:
Happiness the aim of life Virture the foundation of Happiness Utility the test of virtue Virtue consists in Prudence Temperance Fortitude Justice
- As a man, Jeffersion was forward thinking, but not forward acting.
- Cincinnatus: the Roman commander who relinquished power and returned to his farm.
- Wars are more than just a string of battles, and battles are sometimes not the decisive factor in conflict.
Being indecisive is decidedly preferable to being decisively wrong.
- Most 18C armies did not fight in the winter b/c it was too hard to supply and army in the field. The American militias were unusually effective in the cold season, for two reasons
- Farmers serving in the militias were not as busy with crops
- supplies were harder for the British to come by, forcing foraging parties to march further afield.
Madison: The purpose of a national government is not just to deal with foreign powers and settle interstate disputes, but to ensure the security of private rights and the steady dispensation of Justice.
It was Caesar the liberal who overturned the republic, while it was Cato the conservative who died for it.
- The election of 1800 and the peaceful transition from Adams to Jefferson in 1801 is as historically significant as was Washington's stepping down four years earlier.
- Aaron Burr had nearly become president of the United Stats. Six years later, he was put on trial for treason against it.
- The republic had built into it a fatal contradiction: It was founded on a faith in freedom yet on the fact of slavery.
I'd rater speak sense in one plane and expressive language, than speak nonsense in fifty.