Republican Virtue vs. Servile Institutions

...they are not in the kind of extreme and desperate condition which might justify such extreme and desperate action...

...What this means, quite simply, is that by our traditional standards of republican political philosophy, American politics today is the politics of demagogy, the politics of bribery...

...It is also, so far as young people are concerned, one of the most tolerant and "permissive" places in America...

...The first results in people making moral demands upon themselves...

...All that was in another time, of course, and, I sometimes think, in another country...

...Today we are sometimes prepared to believe that the people have been deceived into thinking erroneously...

...In truth, we cannot imagine how an increase in prosperity could possibly make people worse, rather than better...

...We may think that the Sears, Roebuck catalogue is a splendid testimonial to American civilization...

...The American businessman had "character," as we now say...

...And whatever Ralph Nader's merits may be, they are not George Washington's...

...But a sharp distinction was made between such "speculators" and a businessman—not least by the businessmen themselves, who did not permit "speculators," no matter how wealthy, to become members of their clubs...

...Which is to say, "republican virtue" has fairly modest moral implications, rather than high and ambitious ones...

...What will happen is that the common man will simply become cynical about politicians and politics and public life in general—and this cynicism will, in the long run, have a deleterious effect on his character...

...Free enterprise," until the Gilded Age, was supposed to be—it wasn't always in fact, but it was supposed to be—a form of moral behavior, and the business life was supposed to be a morally satisfying life...

...They, like the rest of us, were born into a world they never made, and—again like the rest of us—find it close to impossible to imagine that the trouble they are in is organically related to their having become the kind of successful people our society said they should become...

...But today we understand this proposition in a very different way: we worry whether our institutions are sufficiently "responsive" to the people as they are, and assume that any discordance between the two constitutes strong evidence that the institution needs to be changed...

...And the reason—equally obvious, I should think—is that the life it proposes to its citizens is so devoid of personal moral substance, and is therefore so meaningless...

...For the most part, it was simply accepted as the predestined fulfillment of "the democratic promise" and the full flowering of "the democratic faith"--phrases which are themselves by-products of this transformation...

...democratic" is what we have become...

...Most of the Founding Fathers would have found it a worrisome document...

...Neither the Old Testament nor the New had any difficulty in conceiving such a possibility...

...But we find it well-nigh impossible to admit that they are corrupt—behaving as if they had a bad character as distinct from a bad opinion or two...

...They were greedy and unscrupulous "speculators," of course...

...This ambiguity was something the Founding Fathers were much more alert to than we are...

...This is a serious matter...

...What "republican virtue" asks of people is merely that they be public-spirited...

...We think it means to have passionate opinions about the public good and to work furiously to translate these opinions into reality...

...Thus, it was thought to be dishonorable for a businessman to go bankrupt—not because this was a sign of failure, but because it meant that he was cheating his creditors, who had trusted him...

...Why does the word "republican" make us so uncomfortable...

...I don't want to idealize the past or exaggerate its merits—what we are talking about is a matter of degree...

...Indeed, it is by now so incomprehensible we find it difficult even to imagine that, as we remake "restructure," as we say—our traditional institutions to suit us, we may simply he debasing these institutions so that they will more snugly fit our diminished persons...

...Most of the "progressive" and "liberating" reforms in education, over these past decades, have resulted in most of us being more dissatisfied with American education than was previously the case...

...When our schools were "republican" institutions, instructing young citizens in the three R's, in elementary civics, and in the rudiments of good manners, they had both self-confidence and universal respect...

...making demands upon others became habitual...

...people only respect a society which makes demands on them, which insists that they become better than they are...

...Behind this assumption there lies a deeper dogma: that the very idea of helping people to shape themselves in a certain way is both presumptuous and superfluous...

...Not in the very best repute, it must be said: prior to the Civil War, it was statesmen and soldiers who were the heroes of popular biographies, since they were thought to have an even greater measure of "republican virtue...

...On the contrary: I assume they do...

...American politics wasn't always like this, and wasn't ever supposed to be like this...

...Making demands upon oneself became unpopular...

...But he certainly never predominated so absolutely as he does today...

...Prior to the Civil War, a businessman was a professional man, in the same sense that doctors and clergymen were professional men...

...It was written by a Yale psychologist, and its title was a quotation from one of the student leaders...

...Moreover, such calls were directed toward all citizens, rich and poor, indiscriminately...

...We have improved on that slogan to the extent of adding decent housing, good schools, free medical care, and adequate public transportation as necessary preconditions of virtue...

...The Founding Fatherspermitted themselves to have such doubts, which their political theory then encompassed...

...not simply more free...

...But it did emphatically make political sense—if you believe that the effects of economics on our standard of living are less momentous than its effects upon our character...

...But it is also a fact that they don't feel at all good about themselves and their condition, and a great many of our young people seem to feel positively miserable about their human condition...

...Superfluous, because the people will, if left alone, shape themselves better than anyone or anything can shape them...

...nor did John Adams or Thomas Jefferson...

...Now, there are two things to be said about such virtues, and about the kind of human character they are supposed to give rise to...

...I know of no way in which this philosophical argument about human nature can be settled in the abstract...

...This argument has some truth in it—but what a strange truth it is...

...It is quite impossible for Congress even to contemplate such a resolution today...

...The original republican idea of self-government was what we would today call high-minded...

...And they had a low opinion of those who were perpetually in debt, or who seemed uncaring as to whether they were in debt or not—such people were then called "feckless...

...So the question naturally arises: if "republican virtue" is so easy, why do we find the very suggestion of it so irksome...

...For the American democracy today seems really to have no other purpose than to create more and more Scarsdales—to convert the entire nation into a larger Scarsdale...

...Religion may have followed more reluctantly, but follow it did...

...And, inevitably, students end up lacking confidence in these institutions which, lacking all self-confidence, seem to have no other purpose than to pander to them...

...And I must say that I am appalled that a group of American workers should cease performing essential services to their fellow Americans because they seek a 5 percent or 8 percent increase in pay over what they receive or over what was offered them...

...I have said that "republican virtue," in its original American meaning, had only modest moral implications...

...11 The above essay was delivered as a Poynter Lecture at Indiana University...

...In short, a people will not respect a polity that has so low an opinion of them that it thinks it absurd to insist that people become better than they are...

...We are troubled by this phenomenon, and we wonder why it is that Americans, even as they improve their material conditions, are losing faith in their institutions...

...And if a businessman did go bankrupt, it was thought honorable for him to spend the rest of his life paying off his creditors nevertheless—and for his children to assume this burden as well...

...You would think that this might give us food for thought—but, no, it only incites us to invent new and better reforms, all in the direction of encouraging students to express more freely their appetites, to more freely indulge their desires...

...That is true enough—but I would also insist it is really beside the point...

...This verbal shift mirrors a profound political and psychological change...

...Our sophistication about economics completely ignores this aspect of the matter—to some degree, one suspects, because we assume that "the character of the people" is inherently unproblematic, but also because we assume that improved material conditions, no matter how achieved, cannot possibly mean an unimproved people...

...I know I will be told that these workers have a difficult time making ends meet and that a 5 percent or an 8 percent increase is not to be sneered at...

...And yet, the children for the most part despise it and leave it as soon as they can...

...Above all, wealthy: we find sufficient justification in American history by reason of the fact that it has raised our standard of living so spectacularly...

...To put it another way: The common man is not a fool, and the proof that he is not a fool is that he has such modest faith in himself...

...And that description applies whether one regards their grievances as legitimate or not...

...Unbelievable though it may seem, there was a time—in living memory—when those who campaigned too energetically for public office were, for that reason alone, viewed with more suspicion...

...Still, it is astonishing how long the bourgeois ethos lingered on...

...That it is possible to corrupt a citizenry—or for a citizenry to corrupt itself—is something the Founding Fathers understood but which we seem to have forgotten...

...Montesquieu, whose political philosophy so powerfully shaped the thinking of the Founding Fathers, understood that in a large, commercial republic, whose stability was based on an equilibrium of economic interests and a balance of political factions, this stability could very easily dissolve into a war of all against all...

...There is no doubt that the term republican," today, has about it an aura of confinement, constriction, a limitation of possibilities, whereas "democracy" suggests a genial expansiveness...

...American trade unions used to be essentially defensive institutions—protecting the human rights and economic position of their members—and their ethos was one of fraternity...

...To prevent this from happening, he said, one could not rely on any set of institutions but on the "spirit" of its citizens...

...They were very sophisticated, in a different way...

...They believed that people, if they lived carelessly and unreflectively, could corrupt themselves...

...We do, of course, regard it as progressive because this history has madethe United States into a wealthy and powerful nation...

...Not merely popular government, and not merely individual liberty, but a popular government and an individual liberty that is defined—and is therefore self-limiting —in a certain way...

...It is interesting to recall that, up until about a hundred years ago, it was common for Congress or state legislatures to call, by resolution, for a day of fasting, to take note of some particularly solemn occasion...

...I do indeed have faith in the common people—only I don't have very much faith in them...

...This might be called the democratic dogma, and it is a very different thing from the republican philosophy which animated this nation during its earlier decades but which gradually has become ever more incomprehensible to us...

...They regarded indebtedness as a condition to be avoided, if possible...

...This "bourgeois" businessman—about whose life and work there was absolutely nothing value-free—was succeeded by a more "liberated" type, a more "democratic" type, whose attitude toward economic activity was purely instrumental...

...This may not make any economic sense...

...And for this they are prepared to convulse the community and threaten the livelihood of their fellow-citizens—many of whom are surely less well off than they are...

...The institution of business was thought to make for self-improvement and not simply self-enrichment...

...At the root of that term, "republican," there lies the idea of self-government...

...And, secondly, they are rather "dull" virtues, precisely because they are so modest in their scope...

...Republican" is something we used to be...

...The average politician of today sees it as his role to gratify the appetites of the people—to liberate them from deprivation, as we say...

...In truth, public-spiritedness, in its original sense, means almost the opposite of that...

...But a legitimate grievance can become illegitimate—just as a just war can become unjust—if the means employed are incommensurate with the ends sought...

...I know it will seem incredible but, up until the advent of the morally neutral entrepreneur who is nothing but an economic instrument—up until the Civil War, that is—most Americans seemed to be of the opinion that to be a businessman was to be an honest and trustworthy man...

...That is why it is possible to speak of "republican virtue"—we do not in fact speak of it today but we do not find the phrase meaningless, either...

...The Founders pointed to "that noblest Roman of them all," George Washington, as a model for the American citizen...

...They include probity, truthfulness, self-reliance, diligence, prudence, and a disinterested concern for the welfare of the republic...

...We are more likely to point out that these ordinary people are behaving no differently from many greedy and unscrupulous businessmen...

...These are quite common today, though they were yesterday very rare, and the day before yesterday were close to unthinkable...

...Because the very word "virtue" so frightens us today, suggesting, as it does, fixed ideas of right and wrong which circumscribe our liberty—it is important to emphasize that "republican virtue," in the American meaning of that phrase, is a very different kind of virtue from, say, Christian virtue or classical virtue as the ancient Greeks understood it...

...The "democratic politician" has always co-ex isted, in this country, with the "republican statesman...

...On the other hand, the common man is human, too, and if politicians go around saying nice things about him, he'll not deny them either...

...You are not likely to contemplate the possibility that it is the very society based on this dogma which comes to be felt as "repressive" and from which "liberation" is sought...

...Why don't we ever talk about "The Republican Experiment" or "The Republican Experience...

...All of us normally become what we are expected to become, and if our society thinks it is normal for us to be enslaved to our appetites and our desires rather than to govern them, then we shall come to regard such enslavement as true liberty —and shall simultaneously regard any suggestion of self-government as an infraction of this liberty...

...But it did (and does) have some moral implications, and if we look at George Washington, we see what they are...

...Yet today the term "republican" has fallen into disfavor, and is rapidly falling into disuse...

...It is not that the two terms stand for distinctly different conceptions of the proper relations between a citizen and his polity...

...It will be said that even to suggest such a hypothesis shows a remarkable lack of faith in the American common people...

...They must, they say, be "responsive" to the people if they are to be able to function at all...

...We have separated the democratic idea from the idea of self-government...

...I think that the history of the United States can indeed be fairly written in these terms...

...Our instinct is always to assume that, once these material grievances are satisfied, the people's natural goodness of character will reassert itself...

...I have used the phrase, "that rather trivial goal," in order to put the matter as provocatively as possible...

...How can that rather trivial goal possibly justify such aggressive and costly action...

...If this doesn't sound like such a formidable demand, it is because we no longer quite understand what it means to be public-spirited...

...The extra money, after taxes have been deducted, will make their situation slightly more comfortable that it was...

...The sermon which denounced the failings of the congregation slowly gave way to the sermon which denounced the inadequacy of our social, economic, and political institutions...

...Today,when they are "democratic" institutions, when they are making few demands on their students but feverishly trying to satisfy all the demands which students make on them, they are in a condition of perpetual crisis...

...To be a debtor, in the older view, was to mortgage your future and to surrender a portion of your independence...

...It is still the title of one of our major parties, but it is not exactly a proud title: Republicans (with a capital "R") do not speak about "republicanism" (with a small "r") but instead, like everyone else, speak about "democracy" and claim to represent the spirit of democracy, properly understood, not the spirit of republicanism, properly understood...

...Today, businessmen assemble in solemn meetings in order to figure out what they should do to achieve public respect and favor...

...If you are committed to the democratic dogma, that is the only possible remark you can make...

...Sometimes we do have to be provoked to think clearly...

...There are some of us who will delude ourselves into believing that these young people are fretful at the remnants of republican restrictiveness, and they will assert—in the words of Al Smith—that the only and sure cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy...

...After business and organized labor, just about every other area of American life followed a similar path...

...But we are not moved to inquire whether this has made us a better people or worse, in terms of the original ideals of this republic...

...We give ourselves no such license...

...But Scarsdale is obviously an experiment that has failed...

...People do not have confidence in institutions which do not have confidence in themselves...

...our present casual and impersonal attitude toward bankruptcy might be more economically productive...

...When I was very young, people who bought things on the installment plan were still regarded as feckless and irresponsible...

...is now assumed to be the absolutely proper question for the citizen to address to his representative, who, in turn, frantically speculates as to what he can do for them tomorrow...

...More than that: why do we find the very conception of it so repugnant...

...And as we become self-centered, we become less open to reason, have a weaker sense of obligation to our fellow citizens...

...We think the people are naturally good and that only their institutions can be corrupt...

...After all, it is a fact that Americans today "have never had it so good," as one says, in_ the sense that they are wealthier and healthier and enjoy greater personal freedom than did their fathers or grandfathers...

...People do not respect institutions which are servile...

...After all, people do have intimate as distinct from abstract—knowledge of their material circumstances...

...Our politicians have, over these past decades, learned this lesson well, in the sense that they have successfully debased themselves to what they take to be the appropriate common level...

...If anyone were to suggest that, in a self-governing republic, it should be normal for the people's representatives to wish to be as statesmanlike as possible, continually engaged in a reasonable conversation with their constituents, he would be informed that he is not living in the real world...

...And without self-government, the people perish—from boredom, from a lack of self-respect, and from a loss of confidence in their institutions which, they realize, only mirror their alienation from the better selves that lie dormant within their actual selves...

...But our own political experience does, I think, give us some empirical clues as to which reading of human nature is more humanly satisfying...

...But people who sold things on the installment plan were regarded as engaged in a shady enterprise—because they were, after all, corrupting other people into fecklessness...

...Something is definitely wrong when that can happen, as it now does with increasing frequency...

...But this real world is something which we have ourselves constructed...

...And the reason why this is so must have something to do with the fact that we conceive of democracy as a way of government and a way of life which has liberated us from the confines of such "virtue...

...The one group which seems to understand this situation best of all is the politicians themselves...

...Indeed, they were frequently and familiarly conjoined together, so that one could speak easily of "our democratic republic" or "our republican democracy" without giving the matter much thought...

...And the evidence seems overwhelmingly favorable to the republican reading...

...And should some brave Congressman introduce such a resolution, it would quickly be studded by amendments exempting all those below a certain levet of income or who were engaged in various essential services...

...that is what our economic leaders promise us...

...It does not signify an excellence of the soul, a perfection of the person...

...Perhaps nothing better signifies the difference between the spirit of democratic capitalism in our old Republic and in our contemporary one than their contrasting attitudes toward debt...

...It means curbing one's passions and moderating one's opinions in order to achieve a large consensus that will ensure domestic tranquility...

...Today, that would be regarded as a dismal fate, and we have even taken Washington's birthday away from him for the convenience of a long weekend...

...Dostoievsky predicted, in The Brothers Karamazov, that when the anti-Christ came, he would have inscribed on his banner: "First feed people, and then ask them to be virtuous...

...but, in some clear sense, better...

...None of the Founding Fathers, to my knowledge, ever praised their handiwork by suggesting it would lead to a "society of abundance...

...That is what our political leaders promise us...

...If we are asked to identify a public-spirited citizen, we are likely to point to someone like Ralph Nader...

...Nevertheless, very few of us seem to be able to say this bluntly, without embarrassment...

...The idea of self-government is intrinsically normative and stands in opposition to any social and political system which fails to link popular government or ipdividual liberty to a set of accepted values...

...They would certainly sense that a school for republican citizens is something different from the kinds of schools they now administer and teach in...

...Very few of our workers live on the margin of subsistence...

...And he was in good repute among his fellow citizens...

...This can only be described as selfishness...

...Some ten years ago, in the midst of the rebellion on our campuses, an article appeared in the New York Times Magazine...

...It does not occur to us that, in a democracy, if the citizenry lack self-respect they will be incapable of any kind of respect—that to the degree we officially propound a mean and squalid view of humanity, there will emerge mean and squalid human beings...

...First, they are compatible with practically all the religions of Western civilization—including such essentially secular religions as Deism and Stoicism—and are therefore appropriate to a liberal and pluralistic society...

...Yet the evidence is much to the contrary: satisfying material grievances, these days, does not seem to calm people or make them more reasonable—it often rather encourages them to be even more unreasonable, and even sometimes for invent grievances as an occasion for being more unreasonable...

...The key question is the degree to which one wishes to regard this history as progt cssiye or otherwise...

...And this, I think, is the main point which emerges from the American democratic experience of recent years...

...This last is one expression of that "democratic dogma" which has supplanted the republican philosophy of the early period of this republic...

...They judged an economic system, not merely by whether or not it improved one's standard of living, but also by what it did to the character of the people who participated in that system...

...I don't think it is merely fashionable linguistic convention which is at work here, but a much deeper and extremely significant habit ofmind...

...It is something strenuous, something which involves our making painful demands upon ourselves, something which directs us to a normative conception of the self to which we should properly aspire...

...I include myself among those common people and, knowing myself as I do, I would say that anyone who constructed a political system based on unlimited faith in my good character was someone with a fondness for high-risk enterprises...

...It was the American businessman who first liberated himself from the idea of "republican virtue," in order to create as much wealth, as quickly as possible, for himself as for us...

...It is this spirit to which the term "republican virtue" refers...

...Republican virtue" is an easy virtue, by the traditional standards of religion and moral philosophy: George Washington is—and was always supposed to be—a model American whom every school boy could assemble from his own parts...

...It implies, in effect, that the legitimate criteria of behavior in a democracy are to be found somewhere in the vicinity of the lowest common denominator...

...Why have history textbooks ceased bearing such titles as "The American Republic: from its Founding to the Present Day," in favor of something like "The Democratic Experiment'' or "The Democratic Experience...

...The fact that our ancestors, who were much poorer than we, thought otherwise is attributed to their lack of enlightenment—as is the fact that, even today, observant Jews and Catholics and Moslems think and act otherwise...

...They have become purely acquisitive combinations, exercising monopoly power in a spirit of the-publicbe-damned...

...You cannot have "self-government" in the individual case unless you have a clear—if general—idea as to the kind of person you ought to be, and you cannot have self-government collectively unless the members of that collectivity have a clear idea as to the kind of people they want to end up being...

...Another illustration of what I have in mind is the extraordinary increase, in recent years, of strikes which, for quite trivial reasons, inflict enormous damage on the community...

...For cynicism about others is always accompanied by a proportionate increase in self-centeredness...

...Public office was thought to be a burdensome obligation to which only the more public-spirited would aspire...

...not simply more affluent...

...I am thinking especially of strikes by policemen, firemen, garbage collectors, and transport workers...

...We also begin to wonder how these institutions can be made more "responsive" to the people, so as to soothe their discontent...

...Now, Scarsdale is one of our most affluent and sophisticated suburbs...

...That title was "You Don't Know What Hell Is Like Unless You Were Raised in Scarsdale...

...The relation between satisfying men's material wants, or even material needs, and the quality of their moral nature is evidently an ambiguous and equivocal one...

...Nothing is too good or too expensive for the children of Scarsdale...

...Reprints are available at $.50 each from The Poynter Project, Sycamore 217, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47401...

...If I were to say to a group of American educators that the purpose of our public schools is to produce republican citizens, they would either assume that I was being hostile or, more likely, that I had meant to say "democratic" and was merely engaging in a literary fancy...

...For the better part of American history, it was thought proper that every American boy should be encouraged to want to grow up to he like George Washington...

...Nor is there anything snobbish or, as we now say, "elitist"about such a statement...

...We find the very idea of a fast-day barbarous—it violates the nutritional rules established by HEW And the idea that poor people should fast, just like everyone else, would strike us as utterly preposterous...

...On the other hand, one apparently cannot talk about "democratic virtue"—not only do we not use that phrase, but the very phrase itself does not exist: it seems not to be a possible political expression...

...In the end, when all has- been said and done, the only authentic criterion for judging any economic or political system, or any set of social institutions, is this: what kind of people emerge from them...

...But businessmen were much respected, and were thought to be an honorable class of men engaged in an honorable activity—i.e., an activity from which they emerged better men than when they first entered it, as a result of the discipline which this activity exercised upon their characters...

...We know that only people with full stomachs and on a well-balanced diet can be expected to meet such a harsh moral obligation...

...I would say that the basic change in American history took place when it came widely to be believed that it was both natural and right for our republican institutions simply to adapt themselves to the American people, rather than vice versa...

...Presumptuous, because there is no superior knowledge available as to how people should be shaped...

...That is to say, it was taken for granted that there was a connection between what he did and what he was—between his vocation and his character—a connection that intimated a code of behavior which defined what was "honorable" and what was not...

...The history of the United States came to be written as the progressive liberation of the American people from all sorts of prior restraints which our rather narrow-minded ancestors insisted on establishing for the people's own good...

...These are two very different readings of human nature, and they lead to different kinds of politics...

...The self which is supposed to govern is necessarily conceived of as being a better self than the self which naturally exists, and the purpose of the republic, in all its aspects, is inherently a self-improving one...

...It was a gradual change—so gradual that only a few observers took notice of it...

...Not simply more democratic...

...The businessman ceased being a kind of man and became a kind of function, devoid of any specifically human qualities...

...We think of public-spiritedness as a form of self-expression, an exercise in self-righteousness...

...People do not have respect for institutions which, instead of making demands upon them, are completely subservient to their whims...

...What have you done for us lately...

...and even our religious leaders will issue indictments against the nation because there are still so many people who are "underprivileged" by the Scarsdale standard...

...Our idea of "republican virtue" derives from the Romans, and it is a political conception rather than a religious one...

...It can hardly be without significance that, among the young especially, the idea of "liberation" from a "repressive" actuality should now be so popular...

...Without such a moral conception of the self, without a vivid idea as to the kind of person a citizen is supposed to become, there can be no self-government...

...Most of them will admit, in private conversation, that they would much prefer to be statesmanlike, only they don't see how that is possible...

...And, of course, under the pressure of this perverse moral egalitarianism, the lowest common denominator sinks ever lower...

...The later democratic idea of self-government is based on the premise that one's natural self is the best of all possible selves, and that it is the institutions of society whichare inevitably corrupting of natural goodness...

...The irony is that, as they become ever more "responsive," the people put less and less faith in them and in our political institutions generally...

...Because these moral implications are so modest, "republican virtue" is compatible with a liberal society in which people can have, within limits, different opinions as to ultimate religious truths and different preferences as to their ways of life...

...We obscurely recognize this fact by reserving the term "statesman" for those exceptional politicians who hold themselves somewhat aloof from this process of soliciting and pandering—though we are also so suspicious of our own sentiments, which smell ever so slightly of indecent elevation, that we will quickly and cynically wonder whether the "statesman" is merely a politician who is not running for re-election...

...This is why we tend to take it for granted that all expressions of material grievances by the people must he basically legitimate...

...The two terms have assumed, over the decades, very different connotations...

...In this sense, it is true to say that institutions are made for the people, not vice versa...

...The Founding Fathers thought of it as a form of self-control, an exercise in self-government...

...And then we wonder why such benevolence seems not to encourage people to have a good opinion of their political order...

...Very much the same thing has happened in the field of education...

...Now, I am not saying that, in some instances, these Americans who go on strike do not have legitimate grievances...

...I would half-heartedly deny that accusation...

...The truly creative politician of today is more "far-sighted" in that he discovers new and original deprivations, popularizes them, makes them keenly felt...

...And, had they been informed that people were purchasing this incredible variety of merchandise by going into debt, they would have been wildly alarmed...

...They were sufficiently close to their Puritan heritage, and to traditional republican political philosophy, to believe that "luxury," as they called it—by which they meant merely that degree of material well-being which we today call "affluence"—would always represent a grave threat to the spirit of our institutions...

...In short, they are those virtues which we familiarly associate with "the Protestant ethic" or "the bourgeois ethic"—though, as a Jew, I might point out that they could also be properly associated with "the rabbinical ethic," a fact which the Puritans were certainly very conscious of...

...A clear sign of the transformation I am referring to is the way in which the very words "republican" or "republic" have given way before the terms "democratic" or "democracy...

...Their concern is both serious and sincere, and one almost does not have the heart to tell them that their problem is not in the area of doing but in the area of being...

...the second results in people making moral demands upon social reality...

...As a matter of fact, one can put it more strongly than that: being "republican" is what we have been liberated from so that we could become "democratic...

...What we do not wish to see is that our institutions are being made ever more "responsive" to the wrong people—to the people as they are, not as they might be...

...This "dullness" was always taken to be meritorious, since it meant that you didn't have to be an exceptional person to be a perfectly good citizen...

...Self-government is self-definition...

...To regard this knowledge as less than authoritative is to cast doubt on their innate capacity for self-government...

...They need not, and for a long time did not: up until about fifty years ago, they were used without any sense of tension or contrariness existing between them...

...It is not surprising that the first sphere of human action in which this new spirit manifested itself was the economic...

...It isn't that the Founders were simply less sophisticated about economics than we are today...