David Martin

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

The Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment – the real antidote to Rousseau and Voltaire

The French Enlightenment and the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment happened simultaneously, in the same century, reading the same books, arguing about the same questions. They reached completely opposite conclusions. One produced the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution. The other produced the guillotine. This is the most important civilizational fork in modern history.

1. The French Enlightenment begins with the assumption that human beings can be improved by reason – that if you strip away the corrupting institutions of Church, tradition, and inherited authority, the natural goodness underneath will organize itself into a just society. This sounds like progress. It is a fantasy with a body count. Every attempt to implement it has required, at some point, a Committee of Public Safety to handle the people who turned out not to be naturally good enough.

2. The Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment begins with the opposite assumption: human beings are what they are, not what they could be if properly enlightened. Hume grounds morality in human nature as it actually operates – sympathy, habit, sentiment, the slow accumulation of social trust. Smith shows that self-interest, properly channeled, produces collective benefit without a planner. Neither man is building a utopia. Both are building with the actual material available.

3. Burke is the direct refutation, written in real time. He published Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790 – before the Terror, predicting it precisely – because he understood that institutions are not obstacles to human flourishing, they are its precondition. They contain accumulated wisdom — the knowledge of the dead — that cannot be recovered once destroyed. Pull society apart to improve it and you don’t get the General Will. You get Robespierre.

4. The American founders read Burke, Hume, Smith, and Montesquieu – the Frenchman who looked at England and understood what France was missing. They built a system that takes human nature as given — self-interested, power-hungry, tribal — and constructs institutions to contain those tendencies rather than assume they disappear once the right people are in charge. Checks and balances are not a design flaw. They are what you build when you don’t believe in philosopher-kings.

5. 1776 versus 1789. Same Enlightenment, same century, same vocabulary of liberty and reason. One produces a constitutional republic that has survived two and a half centuries of stress, civil war, and upheaval. The other produces, in sequence: the Terror, Napoleon, 1848, the Commune, and eventually — via Marx, who was a Frenchman in spirit if not in birth — the entire catastrophe of the twentieth century. The difference was not intelligence or intention. It was the starting assumption about human nature. Get that wrong and everything that follows is wrong with it.

6. The guillotine is not the Revolution’s failure. It is its logical conclusion. If man is naturally good and the system is corrupt, then whoever seizes the system in the name of natural goodness is licensed to do anything. The General Will cannot be wrong. Those who resist it are not opponents – they are enemies of nature itself.

7. The real antidote to Rousseau and Voltaire was never a better French philosopher. It was a different civilizational tradition – one that builds with human beings as they are; that treats inherited institutions as repositories of wisdom rather than obstacles to progress; that distributes power rather than concentrating it in whoever currently claims to know the General Will. That tradition was built in Edinburgh, London, and Philadelphia. It is currently under sustained assault — from exactly the same ideas, in exactly the same form, with exactly the same confidence — that Burke watched demolish France in 1789. He was right then. He is right now.

[BBC News (UK) @BBCNews]

Influential Ghanaian highlife musician Ebo Taylor dies at 90 https://t.co/SwKkTStk1l

[Seth Dillon @SethDillon]

If your position at The Washington Post was recently eliminated, please consider applying to write for The Babylon Bee. We are seeking applicants experienced in writing fictional content presented in the tone and style of a legitimate news organization.

[Ben Stevens @BenScottStevens]

Let’s clear up some ~myths~ around Indiana football.

IU had 28 players in their last yr of eligibility in 2025.

Yes, it was T-6th most at the FBS level.

But of the 18 FBS teams w/ 24+ players in last yr of eligibility in 2025…

Only 2 (IU, TTU) made the CFP.

IU also did NOT rank Top 10 nat’l in NIL spending in 2025.

Only 5 of those teams made the CFP.

If it was just about age & money…

Everybody would simply go 16-0!

[Dan Dakich @dandakich]

Is that the best play you’ve ever seen given the circumstances?

[Gloriana Frangipana 🌹🍑🏆 @HoosierGloriana]

It’s not being talked about enough that Indiana fans drank all the beer in Mercedes Benz Stadium by halftime

[Pat Forde @ByPatForde]

It's a feeding frenzy. Roast Duck being served.

[Nope Sauce @NopeSaucer]

@navybirddog Didn’t get any USNA specific gifts this year, but I did get this!

[David Martin @m705264]

@OldGnarlyGoat I was 😎

[David Martin @m705264]

@HeismanTrophy I want to vote for #BlakeHorvath

[David Martin @m705264]

@DeAngelisCorey ..

6
.l om m.
I ..j
Ply.

[Navy Athletics @NavyAthletics]

We do too, Mr. Gaston.

This week, @NavyFB QB Blake Horvath had a visit from his old Heritage Middle School (Hilliard, OH).

The reigning @American_Conf Offensive Player of the Week spent time walking with & answering questions from over 250 students from his hometown.

#GoNavy

[NCAAF Nation @NCAAFNation247]

RETWEET if your COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM IS STILL UNDEFEATED AFTER WEEK 7

11 Remain
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

#CFB
#FBS

[David Martin @m705264]

@bluengoldreport @USNA86 IU will match + 10% what ever PSU offers. There is a lot of $$$ in the IU base

[David Martin @m705264]

@USNA86 @saltysam98 True

[David Martin @m705264]

@saltysam98 @USNA86 And I think he told me that was how he remembered it

[David Martin @m705264]

@saltysam98 @USNA86 Wglap would have said what a great f-ing fly over

[Flash @YellowFlashGuy]

God bless you Lando.