The most recent [2013] serious threats to both liberty and public virtue (abuse of the latter damages both) have come in the form of modern environmental and consumer safety improvements. Attempts to sue gun makers, paint manufacturers, tobacco companies, and even Microsoft “for the public good” have made distressingly steady advances, encroaching on Americans’ freedoms to eat fast foods, smoke, or modify their automobiles, not to mention start businesses or invest in existing firms without fear of retribution. By the early twenty-first century, a New York mayor had attempted to ban soft drinks over a certain size; San Francisco had waged a war on plastic bags; and elementary schools across the nation had prohibited everything from soccer balls to doing cartwheels—all in the name of “public safety.” Many, particularly foreigners and especially America’s enemies, came to view this as weakness and “sissification.”
The Founders—each and every one of them—would have been horrified at such intrusions on liberty, regardless of the virtue of the cause, not because they were elite white men, but because such actions in the name of the public good were simply wrong. It all goes back to character: the best way to ensure virtuous institutions (whether government, business, schools, or churches) was to populate them with people of virtue.
Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States, pg. xviii.
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