ABSTRACT
Americans have been traditionally proud of the earlier phases of their history—colonial and Revolutionary, constitutional and Federalist. The first truth to which the American Proposition makes appeal is stated in that landmark of Western political theory, the Declaration of Independence. This chapter presents the second aspect of the continuity between the American consensus and the ancient liberal tradition the affirmation of the principle of the consent of the governed. The American consensus reaffirmed this principle, at the same time that it carried the principle to newly logical lengths. The American consensus therefore includes a great act of faith in the capacity of the people to govern them. Human and historical rights brings the threshold of religion, and therefore to the other aspect of the problem of pluralism, the plurality of religions in America. The chapter also discusses the tradition of natural law and principle of consent.
