America’s Crisis of Civic Virtue

This article by the former President of the American Enterprise Institute explores the erosion of civic norms, institutional trust, and public-spirit in the United States, arguing that a decline in public honesty and civility is undermining free markets and trust in democratic institutions.  It reflects how corporate actors operate in a context of systemic fragility and how their behaviors can either mitigate or exacerbate institutional decline. Rather than laws, he explains that it is the is the role of civic virtue which restrains advantage-taking by people who might otherwise derive special benefit from social, political, and legal systems.