Many posts have discussed volunteering and civic virtue.
The Constitution was famously defended by Madison in Federalist No. 51 as “supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives.” He made this point immediately after observing that the first task of government is to control the governed, and the second is to control itself. He allowed that “a dependence on the people is, no doubt the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” But even in this formulation, our constraints and institutions do not stand alone; indeed, they are presented as secondary. What is primary and entirely necessary is healthy and vibrant political culture — “a dependence on the people” to keep the rulers in line.
As the ablest scholar and political theorist of the founding generation, John Adams understood as well as anyone the general theory of the Constitution. He knew that a healthy political culture was vital to ensuring that rulers stay within the bounds of their legitimate authority and act as servants of the common good and of the people they rule. Adams famously remarked that “our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people” and “is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”...
This year, we mark the anniversary of a document that acknowledged certain truths to be self-evident, among them that all men are endowed by God with unalienable rights. From the moment of our country’s Founding, the authors of our constitutional and political order saw their project as premised on the notion that the citizenry — though diverse in ethnicity and creed — shared some fundamental premises about human nature and the human person. Now, though, the foundational components meant to form good, moral, and reasonable citizens are frail; they wield less influence in our society and in our politics than they did in the past. Our bonds are weakening; our civic fabric fraying.
If we are experiencing a period of American decline, it’s not because of the constitutional order and political system whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year. The decline is attributable, rather, to the degradation of what Edmund Burke famously referred to as the essential “little platoons” of society: those building blocks of virtue, from families to voluntary associations, that work together to form an informed and virtuous citizenry. With the elements necessary to foster a healthy and vibrant democratic culture debilitated, is it any wonder that public confidence in our ability to keep our republic is so shaky?
