Restoration: Congress, Term Limits, and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy, by George F. Will (Free Press, 260 pp., $19.95)
GEORGE WILL ends his new book by quoting from the letter dispatched to Sara Ballou on July 14, 1861, by her husband: “Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me un-resistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.” Major Ballou, who one week later died at Bull Run, makes plain earlier in his letter that his devotion to his “country” was also a devotion to “the Government.” “I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us . . . And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.”
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