Excerpted below are portions of an essay from Our Ageless Constitution" related to this subject. Youth, especially, need to know that what the Founders referred to as "virtue" remains an essential support for liberty. Matalin's slant on the subject might direct us to what the Founders said about it.
America's Founders knew that it takes more than a perfect plan of government to preserve liberty. Something else is needed - some moral principle diffused among the people to unite and strengthen the urge to peaceful observance of law. They recognized that the raw materials of a free government are people who can act morally without compulsion, who do not willfully violate the rights of others, and who love liberty enough to demand that government's power is very limited. They used the word "virtuous" to describe such people. Defined by Webster, "virtue" is "a conformity to a standard of right," but whatever word is used to describe it, such a moral standard is the necessary fountainhead of a free society.
The Declaration of Independence referred to "Nature's God," the "Creator," the "Supreme judge of the World," and "Divine Providence" Our nation's founders came together, voluntarily, to create a limited government to secure for them and posterity their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. Such liberty, they believed, rested on three great supports:
Their own words are eloquent reminders of their devotion to this belief:
Samuel Adams wrote: "Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.""Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government." - George Washington's Farewell Address
"We may look up to Armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored." - Samuel Adams
"Virtue must underlay all institutional arrangements if they are to be healthy and strong. The principles of democracy are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted!' - John Adams-------(End of quoted material)
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
Read post 139.
Then read post 139.
Then re -read post 139 and self apply.
Thanks for playing.
And. . .
“If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.”
Samuel Adams
“It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.”
Noah Webster
“It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.”
Richard Henry Lee
“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”
Samuel Adams
“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.”
Joseph Story
“If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?”
John Adams
I’m not listening to the show, but our country won’t work either politically, administratively, legislatively, judicially or financially without the people, leaders and regular citizens alike, understanding and PRACTICING virtue — doing what’s right.
Until that happens, nothing will get better. The idea that we can just choose more virtuous people than we to run things is like the socialists' idea that with the right smart people in charge, they can finally get it to work, this time.