Hart calls for return to civic virtue in government
"The classic qualities of the republic are very much needed in 21st century America because of the revolutionary age we live in," said presidential candidate and former senator Gary Hart, D-Colo., yesterday in a lecture entitled "Restoration of the Republic" in Dodds Auditorium.As people begin to lose control of their political lives because of what Hart called the "global and information revolution," more local and personal community governments will be necessary, he said.Thomas Jefferson, who first developed the idea of community government, felt that the founders "left something out," as they struggled to create a large-scale republic and a federation of states, Hart said.Of the three major components of classic republican government ? civic virtue, popular sovereignty and resistance to corruption ? the last two are absent from current politics, Hart said.Civic virtue, he said, is now a quaint term, rarely used by the government.




