THE CITY
Nor is the answer simply to ban abortion and same‐sex marriage or let the Federalist Society rewrite the Constitution. Legislating healthy cultural practices, like Prohibition, treats the symptoms, not the caus‐ es, of social breakdown. More importantly laws like Prohibition have a tendency to not work and, in the course of failing, discredit their advocates. “Laws are always unsteady when unsupported by mo‐ res,”—that is, habits and beliefs—“mores are the only tough and du‐ rable power in a nation.” Passing a law that the people don’t believe in and are not habituated to obey is unlikely to work. Using govern‐ ment to enforce good culture is like a parent moving into his kid’s college dorm room to ensure he doesn’t drink or have unsafe sex. If you haven’t inculcated good habits in your kid before they move away, you’ve already failed; trying to catch up by moving to college with them is not good parenting; it is overbearing and kind of creepy. The effort to renew civilization is too broad and deep for any of these policy proposals to have much of a lasting impact, because it is fundamentally a cultural and spiritual effort. “Feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed only by the reciprocal action of men one upon another.” Alexis de Tocque‐ ville believed that the way to sustain and renew civilization, especial‐ ly democratic civilization, was to encourage face‐to‐face human rela‐ tionships. It is trite and clichéd but true: the first step in saving civilization is to go to school, get and stay married, spend time with your children, and go to church. Investing in relationships with the people immediately around you—in your family, at work, in church, in your neighborhood—is the single most important thing you can do because those relationships will renew your ideas, develop your understanding, and enlarge your heart. Relationships make you smarter, wiser, and more loving. This is not a sentimentalist bromide or a recipe for quietism: form‐ ing relationships is a political act. Relationships are the strong bul‐ wark against the encroaching state. They take place outside the gov‐ ernment’s writ, create a society beyond the government’s reach, and foster ideas and activities government cannot direct. And this is es‐ pecially true when we go beyond our household and neighborhood. Tocqueville feared the consequences of isolated men withdrawing to their little societies of family and friends. “With this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself…Each man if forever thrown back on himself alone, and there 30