From George Will:
“Every republic,” writes Charles Kesler, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, “eventually faces what might be called the Weimar problem.” It arrives when a nation’s civic culture has become so debased that the nation no longer has “the virtues necessary to sustain republican government.”
Read my comments and questions after the jump.
The complete article is “Donald Trump and the Conservative Cause,” in the current Claremont Review of Books. (The link isn’t working, possibly because the latest issue hasn’t been put online yet.)
From what I’ve read about the article, Kesler is not against Trump–he’s cautiously for him–saying that he represents an authentic strain of Republican conservatism.
The point of the quotation, of course, goes far beyond our current election. Given that our constitutional republic assumes certain civic virtues in its citizens. . . .And, I would add, that it requires a certain kind of education (a “liberal” education–that is, an education for freedom, as opposed to a “servile” education). . . .What happens when these civic virtues and civic education disappear from the society? Can a free republic survive? And how close are we to that point today?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In