I have often heard contemporary conservatives say that rights come from God, not government. It is true that rights do not come from government. But it is an unfortunate disservice to the cause of liberty to state that rights come from God. As C. Bradley Thompson documents voluminously in his great new book, America’s Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It, the American revolutionaries—from the well-known founding fathers to everyday farmers—knew better.

Having read this book, I now know that America’s revolutionaries argued that man’s rights come from man’s nature as a rational, volitional being. Yes, many Americans believed that man’s nature is in turn created by God, but that belief relegates religion to a mere cosmology instead of a philosophy. The American conviction that man possesses reason and volition—and therefore individual rights—rested on observation and understanding, not a belief in God.

If today’s Americans could learn—by reading this book—what the original Americans knew, a new Enlightenment would be assured.

As if teaching American history—as never before—were not enough, the book also teaches how to understand all history. Prof. Thompson writes (p.6) that his approach to history, what he calls “the new moral history,” “emphasizes thinking, judging, choosing, and acting individuals over large-scale social processes moved by unseen forces.”

The book’s release date is today, and today is the best day to buy it and start reading it.