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.
Yes, the Founders knew that the PEOPLE, not those in government, must be virtuous and they also knew that those in power would do what those in power always do - try to increase it - which is why they focused on the LIMITS of government and the VIRTUE OF THE PEOPLE NOT IN government.
Something you, and Mary Matalin, miss.