HART, David Kirkwood <br/><br/>
“A partnership in virtue among all citizens” :  the public service and the civic humanist tradition 

 - New York :  Marcel Dekker,  1997 
<br/><br/> It is argued that the Founders' intentions are most correctly interpreted through the virtue-centered paradigm of civic humanism, with its attendant “ethics of character.” Such an interpretation has major implications for the civic obligations of public servants. Among them are obligations to encourage civic autonomy; to govern by persuasion; to transcend the corruptions of power; and to become civic exemplars. Because these vital civic responsibilities have been neglected in recent years, it is argued that public administration should take the lead in promoting them as standards of good government.   The future of fin de siecle America is not bright, as each day brings us closer to some geopolitical, economic, or environmental disaster that will pitch us into the garrison state.   Because of the legacy of Ronald Reagan, a banal self-seeking and “moral thoughtlessness, “(2) we trail dispiritedly after leaders who have neither vision nor courage and who care only for the pomp, circumstance, and financial possibilities of their offices. Lost in the scramble for preferment and self-aggrandizement are the Founding values and the society they were to create.   A few call for a return to the ideals of the Founding, but who are to be the reformers? One area with real possibilities is public administration, for two reasons. First, it still respects the vestiges of the political philosophy of its tradition and, hence, does not automatically reject suggestions from moral philosophy as impractical. Second, many who joined the public service did so because of some sense, perhaps inchoate, of wanting to serve the “public interest.” We can build from this foundation.   In this spirit, then, what are the moral obligations of the public service? While public servants owe their organizations both efficient performance and compliance with the law, they also owe a great deal more because they are “public” employees. Publicness carries higher obligations than those entailed by private employment. To be of the public service is to accept moral obligations, bespoken in the oath of office, the basis of public accountability. At the base, the primary obligation is to know and to believe in the Founding values.   Second, public servants are obligated to embody those values intentionally in all their actions, whether with superiors, colleagues, subordinates, or the general public. Third is the obligation to secure the Founding values for the citizens of the Republic. The fourth obligation is that all are able to speak and write well in defense of the Founding values. These obligations are nonnegotiable.   The source of the problems of contemporary America is our collective loss of belief in and application of the Founding values. By loss, I do not mean to imply that we disbelieve, but rather that we are—following Hannah Arendt— “thoughtless” concerning them. They have become cliches, rather than the guiding principles for all individual and organizational actions. Even those who defend the Founding values are reluctant to deal with the difficult problems of belief, but knowledge of the Founding values must precede belief in them, and knowledge must be interpreted within a paradigm, of which there are at least two to which we may turn.