Did Rousseau have any regiments on this Continent?

[Calvin Johnson]

Scott
	Oops, I thought reply all just meant lipkin, wilson and sellers.
I was giving what I thought was good private methodological advice: go
to the archives directly.  
	The question of whether ideas have legs is far too big an
argument to be settled here.  After training in the Core Curriculum of
Great Books and as a philosopy major I am becoming, with the history
profession, more skeptical.  When you read the original sources, ideas
are used to scare the children, convince a few fence sitters, immobilize
the opposition and envigorate your own, but they are not regiments or
armies on their own.  To understand the arguments, strip out the pretty
words and figure out the program.
	John Taylor of Caroline wrote a brief in Hylton v. United States
on carriage tax in which he argued that the answer to this question was
to be found not in some foreign philosopher but American custom.  Yes of
course and always. The veil has fallen from my eyes. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Gerber [mailto:s-gerber at onu.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 8:53 AM
To: Calvin Johnson; RJLipkin at aol.com; james.wilson at law.csuohio.edu;
sellers at ubalt.edu
Cc: 
Subject: RE: Rousseau

Calvin Johnson wrote [snippet]:  "This not a country that pays much
attention to systematic philosophy."

Specialists in American Political Thought have repeatedly and
convincingly documented to the contrary over the years.  The literature
on this issue is voluminous.

Scott
**********
Scott Gerber
Law College
Ohio Northern University
Ada, OH 45810
419-772-2219
http://www.law.onu.edu/faculty/gerber/