A Republic Requires Restraint

Last day of cross country driving on Monday – arrived at our endpoint in Tennessee around three in the afternoon, but while on the road, I was thinking about culture and what it really means to today’s America. I realized that it isn’t only individuals and organizations that can be anti-American, cultures can be as well.

In my last post, I posited that strong cultures force assimilation because they are strong, while weak cultures invite competition and based on evidence, our culture is progressively weakening.

I consider myself a traditional American. I’m neither special nor exceptional because tens (maybe even hundreds) of millions of people of my age are just as traditional as I am. It isn’t so much about us, it is about what we were taught.

Of the many things I learned as I matured, one of which was manners–but what we casually call “manners” are something much more important. They are the small acts of voluntary self-restraint that make a free society possible. Standing in line without cutting, not standing up in front of others at a concert or ballgame, cleaning up after yourself in public places, obeying rules at public gatherings, yielding space to others, lowering your voice in shared environments, and simply saying “excuse me” or “thank you” are not meaningless social rituals. They are evidence that a person understands he is not the center of the universe.

So, what are we to make of the videos of subsets of black Americans twerking at college graduations, black parents blocking the views of seated attendees at these graduations and then basically telling other people to get F’ed when asked to sit down, teens doing violent “takeovers”, violent fights breaking out between patrons and employees at restaurants?

Behavior is not racial, it is cultural—and these are cultures antithetical to the legitimate culture of America.

What we are seeing now goes well beyond simple bad manners. People blast music and videos in restaurants, airports, and public transit as though everyone else has been conscripted into their personal world. Airline passengers melt down over minor inconveniences, restaurant patrons scream at employees or assault them over trivial disputes, and “prank culture” increasingly consists of harassing strangers for internet clicks. Public spaces that once operated on a basic expectation of mutual respect are increasingly treated as stages for attention-seeking, grievance, and performative outrage. Even youth sporting events, which are supposed to teach discipline and teamwork, now sometimes devolve into adults fighting referees, coaches, and one another in front of children.

More troubling still is the normalization of outright lawlessness and social disorder. Flash-mob thefts, violent street takeovers, vandalism of public monuments and parks, transit violence filmed by detached bystanders, and protest movements that drift into intimidation tactics all point to the same underlying problem: the erosion of civic virtue. Earlier generations understood that freedom depended upon self-restraint and consideration for others. A republic cannot survive if every public interaction becomes a contest of ego, impulse, intimidation, or social media performance. The old expectation was that citizens behaved differently in public because they owed something to the people around them, even strangers. Increasingly, modern culture teaches the opposite—that public space exists primarily for personal expression, gratification, and attention.

Traditional American culture, at its best, expected people to govern themselves before government had to do it for them. That meant respecting shared spaces because they belong to everyone, not just to the loudest or most selfish among us. It meant understanding that having the right to do something did not always mean it was appropriate to do it. A healthy republic depends upon millions of people making small decisions every day to inconvenience themselves slightly for the comfort and order of everyone else. Holding doors, helping strangers, returning borrowed items, showing up when you said you would, respecting quiet in public places, and treating strangers with baseline courtesy were once considered normal parts of citizenship.

America has always been a large, diverse, and often chaotic nation made up of people from different regions, religions, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Manners became a form of civic glue that allowed strangers to coexist without constant conflict. The ability to disagree politically without descending into personal hatred, the willingness to wait your turn, and the acceptance that you are not entitled to dominate every public space are all part of that tradition.

These customs were not signs of weakness or submission, but signs of discipline and mutual respect.

Of course, I can’t speak for everybody, but that may be why the collapse of public manners feels to me like something larger than mere rudeness. What is being lost is not simply etiquette, but the understanding that freedom requires self-command. When people no longer voluntarily restrain themselves, no longer respect others in public life, and no longer feel obligated to uphold basic standards of conduct, the result is social friction, distrust, and eventually demands for external control.

I believe a republic can survive disagreement and diversity far more easily than it can survive the widespread abandonment of civic responsibility.

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