Almost 150 years ago, the 16th President, Mr. Lincoln, called upon the citizens of the United States, locked in a terrible civil war, to resolve that “government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

In the very state where Mr. Lincoln began his career, we can see why he might have worried, what with immense debts, unfulfilled contractual obligations, evident chicanery regarding pensions for state workers, none of which were chosen by the people of Illinois, but were the creations of politicians of both parties, who destined this state to economic doom.

Now we have the prospect of the national government preparing to vex us with a whole battery of new taxes to pay for a government-run health care system that a majority of us do not want. But — not to worry — the bureaucrats say they know best what is good for us. If one were a cynic one might say that in the U.S. today our governments — all of them — are one great scam, betraying our nation’s confidential information to public scrutiny, reducing our national defense capabilities to a state of weakness, providing armaments to Mexican drug cartels, destroying our allies, betraying our friends, curtailing our rights, crippling our charitable institutions, paganizing our children, and all the while being paid by our taxes. If it were permitted to curse them, our executives, legislators, judges would deserve it.

Of course, the foregoing paragraph is not true. But what I believe true is that far too many of us have “taken our eyes off the ball.” We go blithely through our daily routines without thinking about the moral welfare of our country. When we read of anti-religious groups with their preposterous claims, we whisper our dissent behind locked doors and say nothing to our neighbors. When our politicians perjure themselves, or conceal their peculations or other wrong-doing, or flout the very laws they have sworn to uphold, we say or do nothing.

Let’s change that. Let’s do our duty. I believe it was Gilbert K. Chesterton, a great convert to the faith, who said that for evil to triumph, it is necessary only that good people do nothing. The world’s history is replete with examples of populations who ignored the decline of the circumstance in which they were living, and so perished, some of them almost without a trace.