Tocqueville or Austerity? Health Care and the Social Compact
Aboard the Arbella in 1630, John Winthrop composed “A Modell of Christian Charity,” outlining a social compact by which the Puritan settlers in the New World might “be all knit more nearly together in the Bond of brotherly affection.” Almost four centuries later, America’s democratic society still rests on a tacit social compact enjoining us to seek to balance and maximize individual liberty, personal responsibility, and the public good.