A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government. — Alexander Hamilton, Tully No. III
The Illusion of Cost-Free Belonging
One of the quieter assumptions shaping modern American life is the belief that belonging should be inexpensive. Many assume the union ought to provide stability, protection, and opportunity while asking little in return. We speak easily about rights and expectations, but flinch at the ideas of obligation, restraint, and sacrifice. The result is a civic culture comfortable with demanding benefits, yet uneasy when confronted with costs or constraints.
This understanding would have surprised the Founders, not because they imagined harmony, but because they understood the terms of union with greater clarity. From the beginning, the American union was a bargain: security and common purpose in exchange for patience, restraint, and acceptance of imperfect outcomes. Conflict was not treated as evidence of failure. It was understood as the ordinary price of living together in freedom, something to be managed rather than denied.
What feels new today is not disagreement, but the expectation that it should be painless. That expectation quietly reshapes how citizenship is understood and weakens the habits of responsibility on which the republic depends.
What Union Actually Requires
A durable union does not ask its citizens for constant enthusiasm or ideological agreement, nor does it depend on unanimity of belief. Instead, it asks for something harder and less visible. It requires citizens to accept limits on their freedom, compromise without applause, and endure imperfect outcomes. These demands are rarely dramatic, and they seldom feel affirming in the moment, yet they are the substance of self-government.
Union also requires paying for public goods one may never personally use and obeying laws one may have opposed vigorously. In doing so, citizens trust the system, not every outcome. This trust is not blind. It is practiced, tested, and renewed through participation and restraint.
These obligations are not defects in the design of the republic. They are its foundation. A union that required only consent or passion would dissolve the moment either faded, and history offers no shortage of examples. The American republic has endured through a shared willingness to bear the burdens of citizenship alongside its privileges. When that willingness weakens, the union does not fail all at once. It begins to fray.
Hamilton’s Bet on Obligation
Alexander Hamilton grasped this reality with unusual clarity. His arguments in Federalist No. 21 were not animated by romantic visions of unity, but by sober assessments of human behavior and political fragility. He believed a national government could command respect only if it possessed the capacity to act decisively and enforce its laws consistently. Beneath that institutional argument lay a deeper assumption: that citizens would accept obligation as the necessary condition of liberty.
Hamilton wagered that Americans would accept restraint as the price of self-government and shared sacrifice as the basis of shared identity. He assumed citizens would accept short-term loss for long-term stability and that republican discipline would become habitual. This wager reflected a culture forged by war and scarcity, yet it relied on habits that could weaken as memory faded.
Hamilton did not imagine a frictionless republic. He imagined a disciplined one, sustained not by constant agreement or emotional unity, but by a broadly shared acceptance of responsibility.
When the Price Goes Unpaid
A union does not collapse the moment citizens refuse to meet its obligations. It erodes. When the price of union begins to feel too high, people rarely rebel outright or announce their withdrawal in dramatic terms. More often, they disengage quietly, treating government as a vendor and judging it by what it delivers. Loyalty becomes conditional, responsibility negotiable, and participation optional.
The effects of this erosion accumulate slowly but steadily. Civic participation declines, trust thins, and institutions shift from shared tools to contested prizes. Over time, the union remains intact on paper, its structures still functioning, yet its connective tissue weakens. What remains is a mechanical system that loses the moral authority that gives it legitimacy. This form of disintegration is quieter than rebellion and therefore easier to ignore, but it is no less dangerous.
The Hard Truth About Endurance
Union is not sustained by passion or protest, but by long stretches of restraint that attract little notice. It endures because citizens comply, contribute, and accept outcomes they would not have chosen, trusting the system even when it disappoints them. This quiet endurance allows a divided republic to persist across generations.
The danger facing the American union today is not sharper disagreement, for disagreement is inevitable in a free society. The greater danger lies in rejecting loss, delay, and restraint as legitimate civic costs. A republic can withstand fierce debate. It cannot withstand widespread unwillingness to shoulder the burdens of debate.
The Cost Is Ours
Courts or legislatures do not set the price of union, nor is it imposed solely by political leaders. It is paid, or withheld, by citizens themselves. Each generation inherits a structure it did not design and institutions it did not build, yet must decide whether it is willing to sustain them.
A more perfect union has never meant a painless one. It has always required sacrifice without guarantee and commitment without constant affirmation. That price has not changed. What changes is whether people remain willing to pay it.
Scott, I admire the clarity and elegance of your essay, and it certainly is timely in these troubles times. Thanks.
Scott - as you publish each essay, I keep thinking that we need to revamp our process of civic education. My senior year of high school we had a class that was intended to serve this purpose. Clearly we need more. Happy Holidays!