Republican Virtue vs. Servile Institutions

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

...This is a serious matter...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

...not simply more affluent...

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

...Not simply more democratic...

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

...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...

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

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

...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...

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

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

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

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

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

...not simply more free...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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 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...

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

...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...

...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...

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

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

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

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

...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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

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

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

...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...