Chapter 12

Most Americans want the same thing: to live in a civil society where friendly neighborhoods flourish and crime is low. We intuitively want the satisfaction of supporting ourselves through our own labors. We want children to grow up in nurturing households that prepare them to become worthy adults. We want a society that fosters kindness, civility, and industriousness. But we know this vision of a flourishing civil society is in jeopardy.

We have talked a great deal about policy in this little book, but for society to flourish, policy can’t accomplish anything unless we have the culture to give the foundation.

To once again become a flourishing and vibrant society, we must see government shrink and the associations of the kind de Tocqueville so admired expand to fill the void and make the United States once again a nation of neighborliness and kindness.