Never a matter of indifference: sustaining virtue in a free republic

In: Hoover Institution Press publication 520

Abstract

In this first book generated by the Hoover Institution's Initiative on American Individualism and Values, the contributors reveal how, over the last several decades, public policy in the United States has weakened the institutions of civil society which play a critical role in forming and sustaining the qualities of mind and character crucial to democratic self-government. The authors examine * How we deal with the tension between liberty (doing what you want) and virtue (doing what you ought); * How the upheavals of the 1960s transformed liberalism in a "religion of rights," undermining individual freedom by demanding unbending fidelity to political agenda