Who said a republic

Yet civic education alone, though necessary, is not sufficient. For civic education to take root and produce its desired fruit, the people themselves must have certain qualities of self-restraint, goodwill, and moderation. Because those virtues are necessary for the functioning of a constitutional republic, they are often called civic virtue , or republican virtue.

This is not morality writ large, but something more limited and practical. As the late Irving Kristol argued in an essay 45 years ago , republican virtue is fundamentally the virtue of public-spiritedness as the Founding Fathers knew it:. We think of public-spiritedness as a form of self-expression, an exercise in self-righteousness.

The Founders thought of it as a form of self-control, an exercise in self-government. As it happens, Roberts is not the only justice returning to these themes. For Gorsuch, civic virtue requires civility. His book highlights the example of his own court.

The spirit of community among nine justices is not so easy for the country as a whole to replicate. Adam Serwer: Civility is overrated. Madison, for example, understood how much of his constitutional vision depended on republican virtue, and he wrote about it.

But to say that constitutional government does not need people to be angels is not to say that constitutional government requires no virtue at all. Madison himself warned against assuming otherwise. Capitol this past week calls into question whether Americans are capable of keeping our republic. Or if we even understand what it means that America is a republic. America is a republic, a representative democracy. The founders, steeped in history, feared direct democracy, as it often led to mob rule.

The founders said yes, creating a Constitution that established a separation of powers. Our experiment in self-governance required a measure of freedom, or liberty, that had to be won our War of Independence , ordered the Constitution and our separation of powers , and sustained i. Hence, we have a republic… if we can keep it. Bush said in a statement. Then, when some in the crowd turned violent and stormed the Capitol, the President hedged his plea for calm with praise for the mob — all while continuing his plaintive and appalling cry that the election was rigged.

Sure looked like mob rule. I suggest the following. Another of his famous quotes from that era comes just after Washington had been elected the first president. Show caption. By Gillian Brockell. So, did Benjamin Franklin actually say that?

Well, maybe. With some changes. This story was originally published at washingtonpost. Read it here. They still regret it years later. Rather, we focus on discussions related to local stories by our own staff.