The history of ancient Rome is the classic example of the descent from virtue into corruption, from the moral restraint of republic to the intemperance of empire. Many Roman historians and commentators living in the early decades of imperial decadence — Cicero, Suetonius, Tacitus, Juvenal and others — placed great emphasis on the loss of virtue, both among citizens and rulers, as a major cause of Rome’s decline. "How few were left who had seen the republic," lamented Tacitus of the early years of the empire. "The state had been revolutionized, and there was not a vestige left of the old sound morality."

Historians have long drawn parallels between ancient Rome and the United States, and with good reason. Both Rome and America began their climb to prominence as republics, with written constitutions, popular participation in government, and clearly defined limits on the powers of state. Both saw almost uninterrupted military success and growth in commerce. Both began to expand their commercial and military presence abroad, until they became the preeminent powers of their respective times. And both saw a gradual erosion in popular morality that accompanied their rise in power and prosperity.

Moral Decline

In the case of Rome, as Tacitus pointed out, this decline in morality betokened the end of the republic and its replacement with imperial tyranny. In the case of the United States, the final chapter has not yet been written. But if America continues to shed the moral values of her Judeo-Christian heritage, she will surely follow ancient Rome, sooner or later, into bondage. Freedom cannot long coexist with moral depravity.

Empires such as ancient Rome have always aroused admiration, and their fall, regret. This is because empires, the greatest of all the works of human hands, embody man’s endless quest to deify himself and his works — to erect, as it were, another Babel to set at defiance the laws of heaven. The enduring monuments that empires build for themselves, from the Pyramids to the Colosseum, inspire wonder from succeeding generations. Empires usually fall because of material causes — political, economic and military decrepitude. The Roman, Ottoman, Mongol, Aztec, British and countless others all followed this same trajectory.

A far more important question is why republics — limited governments based on the rule of law — rise and fall. In the decades leading up to the American founding, a number of respected thinkers weighed in on the subject of morality and its relationship with limited government. One of these was French political philosopher and historian Gabriel Bonnot ("Abbé") de Mably, whose writings were greatly admired by the Founding Fathers. "A strange sort of politician," Mably observed, "would that legislator be who should think that it is only [necessary to make] laws, and men would obey them of course. He may have settled the rights of every citizen, and laid down fixed bounds for justice; but this is doing little or nothing: if our passions are left to act, they will soon have broken down those fences; a thousand chimerical pretences will set aside legality. Be the laws ever so well framed, injustice, being seconded by cunning and chicanery, and emboldened by impunity, will soon become the general principle." Mably may have underestimated the staying power of a properly designed constitution, but his underlying premise is true: No body of laws, no hoary traditions, and no written constitution can forever escape the tidal pull of moral degeneracy.

Republics arise because of man’s upward reach, his desire to frame laws and organize a state in conformity with unchanging principles, and to maximize his opportunities for improvement. The indispensable characteristic of republican government, as Montesquieu pointed out, is virtue. "When … virtue ceases," the great French political thinker warned, "ambition enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all. Desires change their objects: that which one used to love, one loves no longer. One was free under the laws, one wants to be free against them.... What was a maxim is now called severity; what was a rule is now called constraint; what was vigilance is now called fear. There, frugality, not the desire to possess, is avarice.... The republic is a cast-off husk, and its strength is no more than the power of a few citizens and the license of all."

People of moral character are free under the laws of a republic, because they recognize that restraints, properly limited, amplify and sustain liberty. People lacking virtue, by contrast, chafe at all laws and bounds to their freedom to act. They seek for absolute freedom from restraint, a condition that cannot be realized because of man’s social nature and moral agency.

But what is "virtue"? The word, of Latin origin, once signified "manliness," because the Greco-Roman concept of virtue was closely intertwined with masculine heroism, the "military virtues" that allowed successful ancient states like Sparta and Rome to conquer on the battlefield. Herodotus, Plutarch and other ancient historians admired character traits like loyalty, courage, self-confidence, charisma and tenacity, which helped ancient military heroes like the Roman general Pompey, the Theban leader Pelopidas, and the Athenian commander Themistocles win renown in defense of their country. At the same time, many of Plutarch’s heroes possessed serious moral flaws. Some of them, such as Pompey and the semi-legendary Athenian founding father Theseus, were legendary for their womanizing. Others, like the Athenian leader Alcibiades, were notable for their personal profligacy and dissolute lifestyles. Still others, like the Spartan monarch Agesilaus and Roman emperors Galba and Otho, were notorious for unnatural vices.

The pre-Christian concept of virtue only partially encompassed Judeo-Christian moral values. In the Christian era, however, virtue has a much broader meaning. Besides the military virtues acknowledged by pagan societies, the modern Western notion of virtue includes Christian standards of sexual conduct, charity, forgiveness, and so forth.

Self-restraint

However, all virtuous traits, whether of the older, military kind or of the more modern, humanitarian kind, are really shades of a single, cardinal attribute upon which popular government always finally depends — self-restraint. The august Edmund Burke understood this perfectly. "Men," he remarked, "are qualified for civil liberties in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Why is this so? Because men were created with both the desire and the capability to associate and to form societies. We have divinely ordained moral obligations one to another, which cannot be fulfilled outside of human society. But to preserve society, some sort of ordering principle is necessary, to harmonize, as far as possible, our individual and often conflicting free wills. In the absence of self-restraint, social order can only be achieved by external force — that is, by government.

In practice, some kind of government — some degree of external control — is always necessary; without it, human beings will have insufficient self-restraint to maintain society. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out in The Federalist, #15, "Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without restraint." By limiting the power of government to restrain, control and prohibit, a republic supposes that the majority of the citizens will be capable of self-restraint most of the time.

It is tempting to believe that moral and legal restraints should extend only to the prevention of violence and fraud. But moral decline affects families, communities and other social groupings as well as individuals. Families in particular are and always will be the building blocks of human society. As a result, that "controlling power upon will and appetite" must take into account the welfare of families as well as individuals. Those human transgressions that militate against the family — substance abuse, sexual impropriety, and the like — are just as important to control, if human society is to be preserved.

All societies, even the freest, have seen fit to give government the authority to pass sumptuary laws — that is, laws governing vices like prostitution, gambling, homosexuality and immodest dress. The American founders generally favored the concept of sumptuary laws, and some even argued for their inclusion in the Constitution. But because they disagreed on what sort of laws might be required, the founders omitted them from the Constitution altogether. The unintended genius of this outcome was that the separate states, and smaller political units within them, could experiment with sumptuary laws. This is the essence of federalism, that people retain the freedom to experiment with government, not only to discover what kinds of laws work best, but also to customize local governments to the requirements of the communities they serve.

Religion and Freedom

The surest reinforcement of republican government — more important by far than laws or social conventions — is religion, because belief in God is the most secure restraint on human behavior. As Washington reminded Americans in his Farewell Address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them.

A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are instruments of investigation in courts of justice?

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.

It is the corrosion of religion that is usually responsible for the moral decay leading to the fall of republics. Eighteenth-century historian Edward Wortley Montagu believed that the Roman republic was doomed by the rise of the Epicurean philosophy, which denied the existence of God and advocated a life of self-gratification. "The Romans," Montagu observed in his work Reflections on the Rise and Fall of Ancient Republics, "founded their system of policy, at the very origin of their state, upon that best and wisest principle, ‘the fear of the Gods, a firm belief of a divine superintending Providence, and a future state of rewards and punishments.’" He continued:

Their children were trained up in this belief from tender infancy.... [W]e read of no heathen nation in the world, where both the public and private duties of religion were so strictly adhered to, and so scrupulously observed as amongst the Romans. They imputed their good or bad success to their observance of these duties, and they received public properties or public calamities, as blessings conferred, or punishments inflicted by their Gods.... We neither exceeded, says Cicero, speaking of his countrymen, the Spaniards in number, nor did we excel the Gauls in strength of body, nor the Carthaginians in craft, nor the Greeks in arts or sciences. But we have indisputably surpassed all nations in the universe in piety and attachment to religion, and in the only point which can be called true wisdom, a thorough conviction, that all things here below are directed, and governed by Divine Providence.

However, when atheism, in the garb of Epicurean philosophy, penetrated Roman society, the republic swiftly fell apart:

As long as the manners of the Romans were regulated by this first great principle of religion, they were free and invincible. But the atheistical doctrine of Epicurus, which insinuated itself at Rome … undermined and destroyed this ruling principle.... [This principle of religion] controlled manners, and checked the progress of luxury in proportion to its influence. But when the introduction of Atheism had destroyed this principle, the great bar to corruption was removed, and the passions at once let loose to run their full career, without check or control.

Epicurus was a materialist; he believed that matter was the only form of reality. Consequently, Epicureans believed that all phenomena, even the soul, were material in nature. They taught that the material soul dissolves and ceases to exist after death. Strictly speaking, Epicurus was less an atheist than a deist, who believed that any Supreme Being had neither interest nor influence in the affairs of men. Epicureans believed that the purpose of life was pleasure, although they were careful to define pleasure in terms of following the dictates of right reason, rather than mindless sensual indulgence. But the sum total of Epicureanism — an impersonal, indifferent Supreme Being, a universe devoid of spirituality, the absence of an afterlife, and the belief that happiness is attained by the pursuit of pleasure — cannot be reconciled with that piety and self-restraint so necessary to self-government.

Epicureanism, in its many subvarieties, is very much alive and well in the modern American republic. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the rise of widespread, militant hedonism and atheism in mid-20th-century America has contributed more than any other factor to the swift evaporation of many of the remaining limits on governmental power. Human beings, it appears, are so constituted that they will incline to some authority or other; if they refuse to worship God, they will unavoidably turn to government as a substitute.

When, in Burke’s terminology, people lose the "disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites" as morals decay and virtue is lost, the attitude of people toward both laws and political leaders changes dramatically. As Montesquieu noted, vicious people tend to bridle at all laws, regarding them as inhibiting rather than protecting freedom. They become less and less concerned with the character of their leaders, preferring a pleasing personality to moral integrity. As people acquire a taste for material luxury, they come to regard the state primarily as the guarantor of prosperity, rather than the guardian of rights. Instead of administering justice, the state and its laws are perverted into a spoils system, and the people divide into factions to compete for swag from the public treasuries.

This was the path that the Romans followed, beginning roughly in the period of the Punic Wars against their bitter rival, Carthage. Rome’s dizzying descent from republic into civil war and despotism was accompanied by moral decline, as the rough-hewn agrarian virtues and piety of early Rome were swept away by the gales of materialism and moral relativism.

America’s Present — and Future

In many respects, America has followed a similar path. The United States has seen an astonishing decline in morality over the past five decades or so, a decline accompanied by a dramatic increase in the size and scope of government. Many now believe that America has outgrown her Constitution, arguing that its supposedly simplistic principles do not apply to our more sophisticated age. Laws are passed and taxpayer dollars appropriated without any regard for constitutionality. Many Americans view the federal government less as the protector of rights and freedom than as a sort of fiduciary Santa Claus, a guarantor of health care, retirement, unemployment compensation and education.

In many ways, we are falling prey to our own success. The freedoms we enjoy have allowed America to reach levels of power and prosperity unexampled in all of human history. As a consequence, we have developed an expectation for luxury — multiple homes, multiple cars, constant health care, ever-growing stock portfolios, endless possibilities for recreation and entertainment. And we have come to identify these things — instead of the more austere values of the founders’ republic — as "the American Dream." Certain of the founders, notably Thomas Jefferson, believed that a taste for luxury undermined republican virtue, and they discouraged America from straying from her agrarian roots.

Nevertheless, America has one powerful advantage that the ancient republics lacked: enduring strata of decency laid down by hundreds of generations of Judeo-Christian civilization. It is the consecration of the American republic to higher values than those of its ancient forebears that may yet allow the United States to succeed where other attempts at limited government have failed. Certainly American history suggests that Christian civilization has a resilience that other societies lack. Repeatedly, America has seen swings toward secularization reversed by revivals of religious sentiment and re-emphasis on Christian virtue. The first such episode, the First Great Awakening, took place during the mid-18th century, and set the stage for the War for Independence. The Second Great Awakening, from the 1790s to the 1840s, guaranteed that America would be a Christian nation in spirit as well as in name. It was during this period that Tocqueville reportedly wrote:

I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution.

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

There is every reason to believe that America is beginning to experience another Great Awakening. After a relentless advance across America’s cultural and religious landscape spanning several decades, the enemies of freedom and decency are encountering resistance. Many in the younger generation are questioning the hedonism of the Baby Boomers. Many parents are withdrawing their children from the corrupting influence of public schools and throwing out the television. Many good Americans, parents and nonparents alike, are resisting the effort to drive God out of public places. Heroic citizens in many states are working to ensure that same-sex marriage never receives legal countenance.

America’s epitaph has not yet been written, nor will it be as long as a reservoir of morality and decency persists. For these things, as Tocqueville observed, have always been the real secret to America’s success.

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