Rights or Self-Government?

Is a free people defined by the rights it holds, or by its capacity to govern itself? This thoughtful essay weighs the two ideas that run through the American political tradition and asks what happens when one crowds out the other.

Drawing on the founders and on classical political philosophy, the author makes the case for recovering the habits and virtues that self-government requires.

• Two ideas of liberty in the American founding
• The virtues self-government depends on
• Recovering civic responsibility