How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

Now, rights alone do not guarantee virtue, as we have seen—it certainly was not virtuous to bar black students from lunch counters, or to march wearing white hoods through Skokie. And indeed, a society that promoted such activity without any cultural checks would quickly collapse into disunion and failure. Unionist culture suggests that rights must be balanced by a culture that promotes virtue. Virtue lies in our nongovernment social fabric. The founders were deep believers that duty lies in the morality and religion taught by strong social institutions. They recognized that rights are an excellent bulwark against tyranny, but they don’t provide a strong framework for decency. Rights mean that we leave each other the hell alone, which means we can live together. But if we hate each other, those rights won’t last for long. That’s why, as the founders understood, our rights were balanced by duties. Americans historically like to cite Moses’s cry to Pharaoh: “Let my people go!”