At the Federal Convention in 1787, delegates had no intention of creating a democracy. Steeped in Greek and Roman history, they understood that democracy was a breeding ground for demagogues, whose rhetoric could stir the passions and override reason. Their solution was republican government -- elected representatives who would put the public interest above all else. Filters between the people and their elected leaders were used to increase the chances that, as James Madison said, "enlightened statesmen" would be at the helm. Those filters restricted the franchise and gave state legislatures, not the people, the task of picking senators and presidential electors.
This aristocratic approach did not survive the leveling forces of the nineteenth century, and by the latter part of the twentieth, the republic of "gentlemen" had fully given way to the democracy of universal suffrage. The chance for demagoguery rose along with the expansion of the franchise. The preventive, however, is not a return to government by the few -- a state of affairs as impossible as it is undesirable. It was the few, after all, who allowed slavery, decimated the Native American population, and subjugated women.
But the founders were right to worry about human nature's tendency toward self-interest and irrationality. Washington, in his Farewell Address, cautioned against the spirit of party, which "is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind." Madison, in Federalist #10, warned that factions create the conditions where "our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." Both recognized that, in government by majority rule, an unjust majority has almost no restraints.
Madison looked to structural solutions to provide the needed corrective -- separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism. Yet the founders, Madison included, knew this would not be enough. John Adams said that "Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." Washington agreed, writing that "virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government." Benjamin Franklin, in his final speech at the Federal Convention, warned that the new form of government: "can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."
Americans today are equally sanguine about the need for private and public virtue -- and equally worried. In a 2010 Gallup Poll. 45 percent rated "the overall state of moral values in this country" poor and 76 percent said it was getting worse. Republicans had the most pessimistic view: 88 percent said "fair" or "poor," but Democrats were not that far behind at 80 percent. In a 2015 poll by the Pew Research Center, 68 percent described the "typical American" as "very or fairly well selfish." The public is even less comfortable with the "honesty and ethical standards" of members of Congress, with only 8 percent rating them as "high" or "very high." Business executives come in at a dispiriting 17 percent.
Whether virtue in America is as bad as all that is a matter for debate. That America needs private and public virtue for republican government to work well is a matter for which debate is unnecessary. How to foster such virtue is the central question.
Virtue depends on the building of character, which in turn depends on parenting, education, and individuals and institutions that demand, instill, support, and recognize it. If we value such traits as honesty, respect, self-sacrifice, compassion, responsibility, and fairness, it is not enough to hope that citizens will acquire them and politicians will exhibit them. The moral development of individuals and the moral behavior of institutions must be an ongoing project to which we devote sufficient care.
The level of care is where we are out of balance with the demands of democracy. Political discourse and campaigning may be the most striking example of this imbalance, but it is not the only one. Self-interested factions of all kinds have a right to air their demands but also a responsibility to remember what Madison called "the aggregate interests of the community." Lobbyists are the only group to have a less positive rating (7 percent) than Congress for "honesty and ethical standards." In the private sector, too many leaders are driven by stock prices, not the bottom line of moral responsibility to the society that enables them and the workers who produce their profits. In schools, we are rightly concerned with reading and math skills, but the moral and civic education of the young are "the basics" too. The entertainment industry must also ask itself whether it is part of the solution or part of the problem of fostering virtue, and sports has seen too many scandals among those who should be role models for the young.
It is easy to dismiss the concern for private and public virtue as either quaint or idealistic. But, if we seek a good society, we must put virtue more in the forefront of our thinking. As the French counter-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre, put it: "Every country has the government it deserves." For many of us, that is starting to ring frighteningly true.