John Adams had held out the hope that America could be a “Republic of Virtue,” a nation in which the baser tendencies of humankind could be tempered by the higher ideals of virtue, benevolence, and duty. But after the revolution, he realized that neither the people nor its leadership “could be trusted as guardians of the republic.” Elites were driven by ambition, the masses were driven by their appetites, all were guided by self-interest, and none possessed the virtue for self-rule. As Adams put it in a letter to Jefferson in 1781: “I have been long settled in my opinion that neither Philosophy, nor Religion, nor Morality, nor Wisdom, nor Intellect, will ever govern nations or parties, against their Vanity, Pride, Resentment or Revenge, or their Avarice or Ambition. Nothing but Force and Power and Strength can restrain them.”
James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity, 73.