Jamie K. Wilson has written a profound piece at PJ Media that strikes a resonance with many of Calvin Coolidge’s observations on civilization, including this one from 1921:
Civilization is always on trial, testing out, not the power of material resources, but whether there be, in the heart of the people, that virtue and character which come from charity sufficient to maintain progress. When that charity fails, civilization, though it ‘speak with the tongues of men and of angels,’ is ‘become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.’ Its glory has departed. Its spirit has gone out. Its life is done.
And then, there is this one from 1922:
It is conceived that there can be a horizontal elevation of the standards of the nation, immediate and perceptible, by the simple device of new laws. This has never been the case in human experience. Progress is slow and the result of a long and arduous process of self-discipline. It is not conferred upon the people, it comes from the people. In a republic the law reflects rather than makes the standard of conduct and the state of public opinion. Real reform does not begin with a law, it ends with a law. The attempt to dragoon the body when the need is to convince the soul will end only in revolt.
Perhaps in our current existential dilemma over what anchors we should not have collectively cut and what moorings we can, if at all possible, salvage, we can rediscover that Cal was right all along:
Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.
Perhaps the etiquette we have jettisoned demands a renewed public commitment if we are to survive. If we do not, the American experiment may just deserve the dustbin of history.
The Importance of the Obvious 