Ordered Liberty: America’s Founding Idea - Guest: Peter Berkowitz

In this episode of Roots, Rights & Reason, host Lee Smith speaks with Peter Berkowitz, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, about classical liberalism, natural rights, and the philosophical foundations of the American founding.

Berkowitz explains how America’s core principles: human equality, unalienable rights, and limited government, were forged through biblical teaching, classical philosophy, and modern political thought. Drawing on thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu, he clarifies the true meaning of classical liberalism and distinguishes it from today’s expansive, bureaucratic model of government.

The conversation explores how freedom developed not only through ideas, but through centuries of social change, including religious reform, commerce, education, and the spread of literacy. Berkowitz challenges the claim that America was inevitable, arguing instead that the American Revolution was a conservative revolution designed to preserve inherited liberties rather than overturn moral and political traditions.

Smith and Berkowitz also examine modern threats to ordered liberty, including administrative overreach, emergency powers, and an education system increasingly hostile to America’s founding principles. Despite these challenges, Berkowitz argues that the United States remains the freest and most pluralistic great power in history, and that preserving it requires renewed civic education and constitutional understanding.

This episode defends the American experiment in ordered liberty and explains why classical liberalism still matters.

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