ABSTRACT
A concept of public-spirited citizenship able to fulfill and support such government and "Laws," is required, as is an understanding that such a citizenship in some degree requires of most citizens attitudes, sentiments, and convictions of conscience that make them morally aware and public-spirited. Benjamin Franklin thought men who had served in the army during the Revolution had likely thus developed the necessary public spirit. In the empirical and behavioral models of the twentieth century, the older Jefferson-James Madison "assumptions about the public good," would, Robert Dahl explained in 2005, scarcely be debated. The much larger, more diverse, perhaps more fragmented nation the United States has become in the twenty-first century accepts generally the argument that the strict separation of church and state is necessary to protect individual and group freedom of conscience—as Madison had argued.
