"Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others. If from lawlessness or fickleness, from folly or self-indulgence, they refuse to govern themselves, then most assuredly in the end they will have to be governed from the outside. They can prevent the need of government from without only by showing that they possess the power of government within. A sovereign cannot make excuses for his failures; a sovereign must accept the responsibility for the exercise of the power that inheres in him; and where , as is true in our Republic, the people are sovereign, then the people must show sober understanding and a sane and steadfast purpose if they are to preserve that orderly liberty upon which as a foundation every republic must rest.

The republic cannot succeed if we do not take pains in educating the masters of the republic…But it is not easy to live in a republic where each man has to do his part in the governing, and where he cannot do it if there is not a sound basis of moral and intellectual training…until he grows to abhor corruption and greed and tyranny and brutality and to prize justice and fair dealing.

Theodore Roosevelt [The Free Citizen: A Summons to Service of the Democratic Ideal]