Posts tagged with "education"

• The need to be educated in character

  9/13/2025

  Quoting Robert P. George from the Pursuit: The Founders’ Guide to Happiness in the episode In Order to Be Happy.

  Madison also understood that structural constraints by themselves would be insufficient. If we are to be self-governing people, that is, if we’re to be citizens of a republic, then we need to be citizens who are capable of self-control of self-mastery of holding in check, at least to some extent. Those powerful evil impulses in our nature, and that requires education.

  So, Madison famously said only a well-instructed people can be permanently a free people. That is only a well-educated people can only be a people fit for self-government. They needed to be educated in their character. Capable of distinguishing good from bad, right from wrong, just for unjust.