The founders of the American Republic were not saints.

Nor did they entertain any illusions about the perfection of human nature.

As an advance over the ancient belief in the divine right of kings however, the American founders proposed an ideal of civil government, conducted of, by, and for the people.

Given the instrument of the law, and public institutions charged with following and directing the use of those laws, ordinary citizens were presumed capable of conducting the high affairs of state.

The authors of the Constitution recognised in themselves and others the familiar vices of vanity and greed, but they preferred the risks and uncertainties of a civil democracy, to the false assurance of a benevolent monarchy.

The framers knew that the law is by no means a perfect vehicle for ensuring a universal condition of liberty and justice, but the mechanism of checks and balances they proposed placed as many obstacles as possible in the way of what might be the inflamed passions of the moment.

Thus they hoped to preserve the principles and practice of freedom, against the human desire for earthly salvation and a wish for kings to rule them.

Today, however, an anxious and fearful public yearns for and demands constant displays of divine omnipotence from their rulers and leaders.

Such earthly omnipotence simply does not exist. It must be manufactured, and the supply of those imbued with it seemingly increases with the demand.

Authority vested in democratic institutions often gives way to authority vested in persons, and then to an endless procession of political priests and charlatans, each offering prayers and sacrifices on the altar of the law and celebrity, as they elevate themselves to assumed positions of power and influence over their fellow citizens.

The wish for kings is an old and familiar desire, no less at home today in a society presumed dedicated to individual liberty, as it was in medieval Europe, Mesopotamia, or tribal Africa.

From the dazzling Camelot of the Kennedys, to the shallow debauchery, corruption, and czarist edicts of the Clinton regime, modern nobles do little except stand as symbolic figures in the midst of as much pomp and circumstances as can be reasonably arranged within the constraints of a nominally democratic republic.

They give audiences, receive petitions, and grant privileges, power and favor, meantime indulging in the royal pleasures and perquisites of their high office.

Adolph Hitler, in the 1930's, observed that the object of all propaganda was the "encroachment upon man's freedom of will."

To the extent that political and social leaders create an image of royal omnipotence, they relieve their followers and supporters from the human burdens of responsibility, anxiety, and fear.

"The price of freedom ... is eternal vigilance," wrote Thomas Jefferson. Freedom is hard, which apparently is why most people are so afraid of it.

This visceral wish for kings is likewise the fear of freedom and responsibility. Under the pretext of rescuing hapless citizens from the incalculable peril of liberty, government has lately claimed for itself enormously enhanced powers of repression and control.

The Constitution and the institutions of American government are meant to support the liberties of the people, not to enhance the ambitions of the state.

It is the law that was to give way to the citizen's freedom of thought and action, not the citizen's freedom of thought and action that was to give way to the law.

Yet, so-called "modern" political thought and practice paradoxically reserves all unenumerated power and rights to government, and seeks to grant to the citizen a short list of enumerated privileges, to be allowed or retracted at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats.

Increasingly punitive interpretations of the law tend to support the needs and ambitions of the state, rather than the liberties of the people.

If democracy is about people doing different things, and a nation-state is about people doing the same thing, then somebody, preferably somebody in authority it seems, has to reconcile the contradictions.

Freedom however, erodes and withers away if not put to regular use. For the last several years, it has often seemed that a majority of Americans would rather not suffer the embarrassment of making a scene about something so small as an infringement upon a liberty or a Constitutionally-guaranteed right.

They have learned to speak more softly in the presence of political or bureaucratic authority, to bow and smile and to fill out the printed forms with scarcely a whisper of dissent.

Poll after poll shows large majorities willing to "give up some freedoms" (especially the liberties of others), or to impose higher taxes on their fellows, if only it will mean greater security, less fear, more "fairness", or the personal profit of a new program of government spending .

Such security, however, is the "freedom" of the plantation slave.

This disillusionment with the democratic premise of freedom comes from a widespread failure to appreciate its nature as a social improvisation.

Democracy follows on the premise that nobody knows enough to impose a final solution on all of his fellows.

To the extent that democracy allows its participants the opportunity to come to their own conclusions and to chase their own dreams, it provides them the chance to not only achieve their dreams, but to survive the process.

If we wish to live in a state of freedom, we must learn to endure the fearsome shadows on the walls and the wind in the trees. A climate of uncertainty is the cost of doing business, a part of the price of freedom.

The principle of liberty always stands at risk. The practice of self-government is too easily overturned.

Democratic institutions demand the ceaseless care and tinkering of a people willing to accept responsibility for even their most appalling acts.

But people who have lost faith in themselves, who no longer understand their own history or trust in their own experiments, can no longer summon the energy to imagine their own future.

They subside into a state of immobilized fear, seeking salvation from anyone who will promise to deliver them another few moments of peace and security, and banish the monsters from beneath the bed.

To the extent that modern society has emerged from barbarism, it is because, and not in spite of, the hopes and dreams of ordinary people that have prevailed over the interests of the state.

Now, as in ancient Athens, democracy represents humankind's best attempt to date to organize a liberated human spirit and freedom of the mind against the forces of despotic tyranny and superstition.

Democracy is perhaps best characterized as a habit of mind rather than a system of government. We protect the other person's liberty in the interest of protecting our own.

What joins Americans to one another is not a common nationality, language, race, or ancestry, but the shared work of imagining the future.

The love of country follows from the love of its freedoms, not from the pride in its armies, monuments, or gross national product.

As a means and not an end, American self-government is a narrative. Not one story but many stories, and none of them more privileged than others.

Civilizations do not decline because of freedom. They die instead from the fear of thought and paralysis of spirit that accompanies the worship of kings and the desire to make time stand still.

It was this simple truth that the founders understood, and sought to transmit to their posterity.

"A republic," declared Benjamin Franklin, "if you can keep it!"