America speaks constantly of freedom while becoming increasingly enslaved to appetite, anger, screens, consumption, and desire. Scripture and America's Founders understood something we are in danger of forgetting: liberty cannot survive without self-government. Chapter 28 of The Founders’ Quill asks a deeply personal question—what has mastered us? The recovery of ordered liberty may begin much closer to home than Washington.

America’s Founders understood that liberty could not survive without moral restraint. John Adams envisioned “a government of laws and not of men,” but that principle applies to citizens as surely as rulers. Chapter 27 turns the mirror toward us: if we want to recover ordered liberty, we must become people capable of self-government. Before asking what must change in America, we must ask a harder question: Who governs me?