A republic cannot be held together by laws alone. It requires people who have learned to belong to one another. After considering self-government, the home, and the formation of the next generation, Chapter 31 of The Founders’ Quill moves beyond the front door to ask what responsibilities we have toward the people around us. Jesus called them simply our neighbors. Americans once built much of their common life in the space between the individual and government—through churche

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?