David Davenport: Rugged Individualism Dead or Alive?

Based on his new Hoover Institution Press book, Rugged Individualism: Dead or Alive? co-authored with his longtime Pepperdine colleague Gordon Lloyd, David Davenport discusses our unique brand of individualism that dates back to the American founding. Davenport begins with the articulation of American individualism in the Declaration of Independence, following it through its safeguarding in the US Constitution, its flourishing in westward expansion, and its declining in the face of progressive ideology and New Deal politics. He also discusses the ebbs and flows of our “rugged individualism” through the decades since, from the great society to the Reagan revolution, as well as Herbert Hoover’s role as one of that philosophy’s most ardent champions.