Has the republic failed the People, or have the People failed the republic? Part III

Only when the People are committed to virtue and liberty, can the republic be saved.

Life in early America was lived primarily in small towns that were centered around local associations, church life, and family. Politics were local, performed mainly at town meetings attended by friends and neighbors. It was a place where individuals could speak freely, address their concerns, air their grievances, and request assistance. Government was closer to the People, not distant. It was populated by friends and neighbors who served only for a short time before returning to their regular occupations. It was a time when the government was not feared, hardly heard from, for it was small, rarely injecting itself into the private affairs of the People who sought nothing more than the natural and tranquil development of a free society.

People in early America always felt the effects of their beginnings. An environment that complemented their birth and served to influence their physical and spiritual growth, that would influence them throughout their lifetime. They underwent the rise of prejudices, the development of desires, and expansion of certain behaviors, which eventually became, right or wrong, their standard of values and morals.

Every community in early America imposed standards of values and morality. If the ideals were excessive, people could freely relocate to other more tolerable acceptable towns. Americans were not subjugated under a county lord who could mandated adherence to aberrant decrees, compelled into performing forced labor, toil on a road work party, or pressed into soldierly. Americans were not visited unexpectantly by a tax collector, who held the authority to initiate proceedings, absent of due process, to confiscate property, as was the norm in old Europe. In America, the People entered a land where the dreams of the imagination and innovation were accepted.