Repost from The New American.
He was paraphrasing a line he’d written in 1776 — “The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue” — when the new nation was but a dangerous dream. Three years later, cousin Sam observed, “While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader…. If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslaved [sic].”
Only the Virtuous Can Live Free
The Adamses were echoing an idea so common among the Founding Fathers it was almost a cliché: only a virtuous people can live free. However they phrased it, whatever synonyms they used for “liberty” (including, impossibly enough, “government”) and “virtue” (including, logically enough, “Christianity”), the Founders insisted that liberty requires virtue. They were equally adamant that political slavery punishes immorality.
“Virtue” has a quaint ring to it, as 18th-century as “mobcap” or “syllabub.” And Americans then obsessed about nourishing it as much as their descendants do about starving themselves into tight jeans.
Unfortunately, far too many Americans still haven’t learned their lesson two centuries after the Revolution. That makes Dr. Rush’s observation as true today as then: “The war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution…. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens.”