A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Sometimes, of course, the cynic in all of us gets the upper hand. Sometimes it’s hard to see the way forward for all the trials that lie so squarely before us. But when you find yourself in doubt, I encourage you to remember this story from G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton noted that an ordinary man, asked “on the spur of the moment” to explain “why he prefer[red] civilization to savagery,” likely “would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, ‘Why, there is that bookcase…and the coals in the coal-scuttle…and pianos…and policemen.’ ” But, as Chesterton reminds us, there is sometimes wisdom in a stuttering reply. Sometimes the virtues of civilization are too numerous to count, almost so obvious as to be too obvious to see. If asked to explain them, it’s hard to know where to begin.

The same is true of our constitutionally governed republic. We may not always notice them, but what the Constitution calls our “Blessings of liberty” are everywhere around us. They are what allow more than three hundred million of us to go about our daily lives, each in our ways, mostly in peace. Really, it is one of the great wonders in world history. But if those blessings are to endure, it falls to each of us to do what we can to preserve and pass down civic understanding and the virtues of civility. To help prepare those who follow for the high and humbling responsibility of preserving our Constitution, the greatest charter of human freedom the world has ever known. Soon enough the torch will pass to their hands.