One overlooked "founder" offers enduring answers: Adam Smith. Smith published the Wealth of Nations in 1776, the same year the Continental Congress declared American independence. By the time of the Constitutional Convention 11 years later, his ideas had been incorporated into the thinking of the new nation's leaders.
Smith's great revelation was that political freedom would most likely emerge and persist under conditions of economic freedom, what we now call capitalism. Our democratic system as defined in our Constitution incorporated respect for this economic system.
Read USA Today article. (hat tip: RealClearPolitics.com)
Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman also wrote in Free To Choose...
The story of the United States is the story of an economic miracle and a political miracle that was made possible by the translation into practice of two sets of ideas - both, by a curious coincidence, formulated in documents published in the same year, 1776. One set of ideas was embodied in The Wealth of Nations, the masterpiece that established the Scotsman Adam Smith as the father of modern economics...
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