The sheer gigantism of the state makes it impossible for people to know what the relevant laws are, for most spheres of human action; and it is a short step from not knowing the law, to seeing that nobody else knows it, to shrugging and not caring what it is.

We need a substantive vision for the good life in America. As Aristotle put it in his “Politics,” “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only.”