John Adams famously said that our Constitution was made “only for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Was he right?

Perhaps the first thing to note is that our Constitution is, to borrow a phrase from Hayek, a “constitution of liberty.” Under it, the power of government over the people is checked and limited, and the people enjoy a large measure of freedom. But freedom can, of course, be used for good or for ill. Freedom can be used wisely or irresponsibly.

Like the other Founding Fathers, Adams recognized that freedom does not guarantee virtue; yet the maintenance of freedom and the cultivation of its cultural conditions require virtue. Freedom itself is placed in dire jeopardy when free people become corrupt or foolish. It is also put at risk when fear, absent the virtue of courage, induces them to abandon freedom for the sake of security — be it economic or physical.

Read the article “Could America Survive without Religion?” on thepublicdiscourse.com.