The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom

A Florida Bus Attendant — Ralph Bradford

Human society is built and can only be built upon a foundation of citizenship accountability. The strength of a nation is not its legal machinery, but the moral stamina and courage of its people. The law is but the codification of their conscience. There are not enough laws and never will be, to keep a society stable if its members no longer will it. There are not enough policemen, courts, judges or prisons, nor ever can be to prevent the death of a civilization whose people no longer care. Law enforcement is for the criminal few; it collapses if it must be enforced against the many. When the sense of personal accountability is no longer present in majority strength, then no legal device known to man can hold the society together. Freedom is a timely torch blazing in the dark.