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".....Wise and virtuous, loving, sincere, honorable, self-reliant, self-disciplined, generous, and nonviolent.  Such a person acts responsibly and reasonably, and does what needs to be done.  He or she is capable of governing himself or herself, not only morally but also politically.
That conclusion was taken for granted by the Founding Father of the United States, and it underlay all of Emerson's philosophy.  Only self-governing (i.e., self-reliant, self-disciplined) people are able to be self- governing in the political sense.  A democracy ignores that absolutely basic and eternal truth at peril to its very existence.  Now, when so much of American culture is based on greed, self-indulgence, ignorance, and viciously destructive passion, we must understand that a nation in which a majority of the people is enslaved and degraded by such a culture will automatically lose its ability to govern itself democratically."


   -from the introduction to "SELF-RELIANCE,  the Wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson as inspiration for daily living"  by Richard Whelan. published by Bell Tower, 1991.