"Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thrist for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?"
John Adams, February 6, 1805, an excerpt from a letter to Benjamin Rush quoted in "John Adams" by David McCullough
These questions are as applicable today as they were when John Adams asked them in 1805. I have to admit that I often allow the "spirit of party" to influence my own thinking in regards to our nation's government, although, I try to maintain my views based on virtue as a guiding principle. I like to
believe that President Bush feels the same way, but I do not have the same view of most of members of the Congress.
