THE VIRTUE SOLUTION
Restoration of Courageous Communities: The Founders' Plan to Save America
There is hope.
The Founders of our country gave us a key to open the door of liberty for our posterity. That key was virtue among the American people. And, they gave us a set of steps to apply virtue they laid out in the Bill of Rights. These steps both foster and harness personal character through local relationships, restoring the fabric of America. It's time to implement this plan to renew our freedom. Learn more now!
We the People as a whole have become too dependent on big government and big corporations. This dependency has made our society fragile and apathetic. Our resiliency to weather natural, economic, and cultural storms has been depleted. Worse, our capacity to resist violation of the Constitution has been largely undermined.
The answer is to pursue a principled cultural change toward courage, self-sufficiency, and love for God and others, while taking steps to reestablish the community backbone on which America was built. The Virtue Solution Project aims to get you out of your comfort zone to stand up and rightly care for your neighbors, to help our country find hope in God and each other, instead of in big government.
Virtue makes principled change possible
This kind of leadership - this moral courage and character - was what the American Founders called "virtue." It is indispensable to the survival of liberty.
The "micro-hub" vehicle
A "micro-hub" is a community center established specifically to promote a Christian conservative viewpoint. But it will accomplish this goal not only through education but through meeting physical needs in its locale. It uses an integrated approach.
The micro-hub provides a common space we believe can successfully shine light in our local neighborhoods to cultivate virtue. Each micro-hub will have a meeting area such as a coffee cafe, a work space such as a garden, and a resource area such as a food pantry. The idea of the micro-hub stems from the writings of the Founders, and has been used commonly across America in the past. We encourage families, churches, businesses, and civic associations to consider establishing these centers to nourish people in body, mind, and spirit.
There are five main areas of local strength that a micro-hub should address: Spiritual Leadership, Physical Protection, Engineered Resources, Food Resources, and Medicine. Learn more now!
A fresh beginning for our country
The Founders never believed words written on paper could
keep America free. They clearly
indicated that it is only as the people possess virtue – that is, moral courage
– to enforce them, and to resist their violation, that the Founding documents such as the
Constitution are meaningful. But if the people will take action to use the tools provided, those documents are very meaningful. As James Madison put it, the "guards for liberty" in the Bill of Rights are "more useful than essential."
We believe the Founders designed the Bill of Rights in such a way that its exercise in the face of rising tyranny would result in the construction of strong self-sufficient communities where people cared for one another. Thomas Jefferson in particular set forward this vision, in a plan now known as "Jefferson's Hundreds." Within these communities, virtue would be again multiplied as people regained understanding and skill in areas of personal responsibility. The islands of refuge would become lighthouses to others. As virtue was freshly cultivated, new
life would be given to our liberty, and the American people would be provided with the capacity to weather any economic or political storm.
The foundation for this design is a spiritual awakening of God’s people. The church and family must again fulfill their God-given roles and responsibilities in the culture before we can teach others to do so. There must be a new reformation – a “revolution in the hearts and minds of the people” as John Adams put it – in which Christ is placed in His rightful position as the authority over all of life, and His law of liberty is made our rule of conduct.
There is hope. It is not in a great leader, new Constitutional provisions, a more conservative Supreme Court, or even education. It is in you and me practicing courageous moral responsibility through God's power.
How should we get started? See the plan here.
What the Founders told us
John Adams
Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government -- can render us secure.
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
James Madison
Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.
A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.
Patrick Henry
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
George Mason
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Benjamin Franklin
It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.
Richard Henry Lee
No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and... their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice.... These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.
...It is in the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour.... Degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats into the heart of its laws and constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
Virtue and morality is a necessary spring of popular government.
George Washington
Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.
Samuel Adams
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt - when they degenerate into a populace - that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.
James Monroe
Civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue.
Rev. John Witherspoon
Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of their citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray them.
Joseph Story
Ready to take action?
Yes! Sign me up for the Founders' plan!
The Path Needed: Where do we go from here? The true problem is dependence on evil. There is a specific path to restoring liberty, but it will require us to get uncomfortable.
The Real Cure: The cure for our nation's disease is virtue. The treatment is found in loving our neighbors out of love for our Creator.
Print a neighborhood brochure.
Discover the ten reasons.
Peruse our full syllabus here.