To Revive Responsibility

Needed: individual awareness of a new sense of nationhood

Whatever the institutional mechanics of it, the real renovation of America must begin in Americans' minds. It must express itself in their civic morale, their sense of individual responsibility for themselves, for the communities and the nation around them. It is not enough to say that the Government has failed, that the System has failed. That accusation subtly absolves individual citizens of blame but also leaves them feeling like abjectly passive victims of immense conspiracies—bureaucracies, multinational corporations. No society can flourish, or even function,...