Again, democracy will be, in a large sense, individualistic. That ideal of society which seeks a disciplined, obedient people, submissive to government and unquestioning in its acceptance of orders, is not a democratic ideal. You cannot have an atmosphere of "implicit obedience to authority" and at the same time and in the same place an atmosphere of democratic freedom.

There is only one kind of discipline that is adequate to democracy and that is self-discipline. An observant foreigner has lately remarked, somewhat paradoxically, that the Americans seemed to him the best disciplined people in the world. In no other country does a line form itself at a ticket office or at the entrance to a place of amusement with so little disorder, so little delay, and so little help from a policeman. In no other country would an appeal of the government for self-control in the use of food or fuel, for a restriction of hours of business, for "gas-less Sundays," have met with so ready, so generous and so sufficient a response.

Our American lads, alert, adaptable, swiftly-trained, self-directed, have been quite the equal of the continental soldiers, with their longer technical training and more rigorous military discipline. In these respects the English, and especially the British colonial soldiers have been much like our own.

Democracy, whether for peace or for war, in America or in England, favors individuality. Independence of thought and action on the part of the mass of the people are alike the result of democracy and the condition of its continuance and more complete development, and it is visibly growing in England as the trammels of old political and social class control are being thrown off.

Edward P. Cheyney: Historical Tests of Democracy

What is a constitution? Certainly not a league, compact, or confederacy, but a fundamental law.

That fundamental regulation which determines the manner in which the public authority is to be executed, is what forms the constitution of a state. Those primary rules which concern the body itself, and the very being of the political society, the form of government, and the manner in which power is to be exercised—all, in a word, which form together the constitution of a state—these are the fundamental laws.

This, Sir, is the language of the public writers. But do we need to be informed, in this country, what a constitution is? Is it not an idea perfectly familiar, definite, and well settled? We are at no loss to understand what is meant by the constitution of one of the States; and the Constitution of the United States speaks of itself as being an instrument of the same nature.

Daniel Webster: The Constitution Not a Compact between
Sovereign States, 1833