The Virtuous Republic, Part 5: Reforging Virtue and the Republic

Figure Credit: Colonial Williamsburg

Abstract: The previous parts in this series (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4) showed the US is neither virtuous nor a true republic. So how do we reforge the virtuous republic? We must approach this problem from both a governance and virtue axis. Both flow from an educated electorate with critical thinking skills. From the governance aspect, we need to clip politicians’ wings and not allow them to spend money willy-nilly. We must enact balanced budget and term limits amendments and prosecute politicians, from both parties that violate the law, and make the laws stricter for politicians that wield power. We need to bring the political elites back inline with the citizens and not treat them as special. On the virtue side, we need to teach both virtue and civics throughout K-12, culminating with serious games in education that present the issues in founding the republic and help students to understand and critically think about these issues. Every high school student should pass a comprehensive civics exam to graduate.

The previous parts in this series (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4) showed the US is neither virtuous nor a true republic. Now Plato, in The Republic, stated a philosopher king would be the best ruler over a republic. I do not think that it is stable. The system may generate one or two good philosopher kings, perhaps like Marus Aurelius. But as history showed, Aurelius’ son was a truly abysmal ruler and kicked off a stream of terrible, or at least less than virtuous, emperors. No, I don’t think trusting in philosopher kings will work.

I suspect the founders of the Republic understood this problem and designed the Constitution to mitigate the problems they discussed in the Federalist Papers. These included restricted suffrage, checks and balances in power, limited federal revenue, and robust federalist structure. Today, we like to think the restrictions on suffrage stemmed from sexism and racism. Not all white men had the right to vote. Voting was essentially restricted to those who paid taxes.

Benjamin Franklin reportedly once said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” While there is some doubt about the veracity of the quote, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Scottish author and contemporary of Franklin, wrote: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Overtime, however, a series of constitutional amendments watered down or eliminated these mitigations. The 15^th Amendment, 19th Amendment, 24th Amendment, and 26th Amendment all changed suffrage to all citizens over 18, whether or not they pay taxes. The 16th Amendment allowed the central government to collect income taxes. The 17th Amendment changed senators from state appointed to popularly elected, thus fundamentally changing the senate and watering down federalism.

Now the chances of rolling back the suffrage amendments are about zero. Likewise, the odds of rolling back the 16^th and 17^th amendments, while not as low as the suffrage amendments, are not high. Therefore, if we want a virtuous republic, we need to constrain political behavior. I nearly wrote restore a virtuous republic, but there are writers such as Charles Beard that think the US was not formed out of virtue, but greed. Given the fates of many signers of the Declaration of Independence, I disagree about the founding of the republic. But given Gordon S. Wood’s assertions in The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Republic may have started losing its virtuous ways by the 1820s. It may have started as early as the initial founding when Alexander Hamilton fought for and won the right for speculators in American war debts for unpaid salaries for soldiers were fully reimbursed. Most of the soldiers received pennies on the dollar from the speculators. Likewise, Andrew Jackson engaged in land speculation that may have extended slavery in the US and forcibly removed the Cherokees from their lands. Moving forward, the US government deliberately exposed soldiers and sailors to nuclear radiation and LSD, as well as syphilis. Having said that, I think overall the US is one of the more ethical countries that the world has seen.

I suspect that while the founders were, in the main, virtuous and wanted to create a sustainable republic, greed and the quest for power quickly infected politics and the state. So what do we do to cure the infection?

Perhaps the utopian authors discussed in Part 1:

• There needs to be some way to level the power differences between people in society.
• Political leaders need constraints on their ability to gain and use power and money. In some cases, the utopian society in the stories tied the politician’s wealth to societal wealth while in power.
• Politicians who violate the law and act according to their own benefit at the expense of society are vigorously punished.

We can develop an inoculation based on these three points that do not require restricting suffrage. Rather, we need to restrict the power of politicians in five ways:

• Require a balanced budget. That includes a defined line item to pay off the deficit within 20 years.
• Require politicians to have the same health, retirement and other programs they legislate for citizens.
• Investigate politicians that have large sources of wealth for which their salary cannot generate. Prosecute them for these and other illegal activities. Hold them to a high level of accountability.
• Stop treating politicians like an elite class. They are not and many have very low qualifications. Change their retirement plans to match other government workers. Enact term limits.
• Eliminate seniority for committee and other positions in congress. Establish real qualification requirements for committee and other positions.

On the virtue front, we need to:

• Teach the founding of the Republic, starting in elementary schools with core facts and working to a simulation/game in high school where students role play the representatives at the constitution convention, grappling with the complex issues they faced. Require high school students to pass a civics exam to graduate.
• Teach the core aspects of virtue starting in elementary school, working up to a simulation/game in high school.
• Understand the rule of law, so people cannot just throw the term around and obscure its meaning.
• Hold politicians and leaders accountable for virtue lapses. Make examples of virtue lapses and illegal activity.

We must approach this problem from both a governance and virtue axis. Both flow from an educated electorate with critical thinking skills.