fter its laws, the key to democracy is none other than the good will of its citizens.  It goes without saying that unjust laws make for a bad democracy.  But, alas, all the laws the just laws of a democracy are for naught if good will is notoriously lacking among most of its citizens.  Good will is not substitute for justice.  All the same, without good will justice cannot prevail.   And it seems to me that over the past few decades good will has been drying up rather like a well is running out of water.  Good will is a social lubricant for the simple reason that it enables each party to acknowledge the good intentions of another when such intentions are present.

In a society shorn of good will, then it becomes rational for persons to be prudent and not to extend themselves lest they be harmed for their efforts to act on behalf of another.  It is good will that moves me to open the door for you when your arms are full.  But that act of good will is tied to the presupposition that you will not accuse me of trying assault you when I do so.  For if I think that, then I shall deem it best that I let you struggle on your own to open the door, though your arms are full. 

It does not take much to indicate good will.  If you are coming to take the seat next to me on the subway, then the appropriate shift in my posture, however slight, acknowledges this.  In most cases, the shift does not really make more room for the person coming to sit down.  But it does count as an acknowledgement; and that, in turn, counts as a small gesture of good will.  Not much at all.  Just so, it beats an appearance of hostility or crass indifference any day of the week or year. 

There are two fundamental aspects of basic good will.  One is that people will not expect more of one another than is reasonable.  The other is that people will accept responsibility insofar as this is reasonable.  The first is related to the second in that when we see that a person is accepting responsibility, then we do not use this as an excuse to excoriate or belittle the individual.  Nor do we discount it.

While friendship may spring out of good will, it is important to realize that good will, as such, is not an inevitable springboard for friendship.  For one thing, good will can be enormously localized.  There may be considerable good will between me and my physician; yet, it would we are not about to socialize or hang out together.  Either one of us would be stunned if the other made such a suggestion.  Just so, there is no mistaking the good will between us. 

Good will is rather like the small coin of social interaction.  The collective of good will makes for huge sum.  Indeed, it makes for a most desirable moral climate.  A moral climate of majestic good will is one thing.  A moral climate completely shorn of good will is quite another.  It is not possible to live the same kind of life in both moral climates.  Not even a saint could. 

What I am about to say is awkward but strikes me as true nonetheless, namely that we live in a society with more equality and less good will.  By contrast, I have seen more good will when equality flowered far less.  This shows quite simply that there is no logical connection between good will and equality.  In particular, it is a mistake to think that equality will bring good will in its wake. 

The defining feature of good will is that taking oneself seriously is never an excuse not to take another seriously.  Modern society has perverted things.  For the prevailing view seems to be that taking oneself seriously provides one with an excuse not to take others seriously.  In some case, it is even worse that that: Taking oneself seriously is actually thought to be a justification or at least an excuse to harm others.

Significantly, it is only in the context of good will that the exercise of discretion is possible.  After all, if I thought that your intentions were to harm me in whatever way you could, it would be very, very foolish of me to trust you with just about anything of value that I have.  By contrast, where it is apparent that your good will towards me is abundant, then I know two things about you: The first is that you will not seek to harm me.  The second is that insofar as things go wrong, you will be concerned to make things right again.  The upshot of the second is that your first line of defense will not be to blame me for what went wrong. 

We need more than laws of justice.  The reason for this is not that the laws of justice are dispensable.  Surely they are not.  Rather, it is that by themselves laws are not adequate for the task of social interaction. 

Good will is the very fountain of basic politeness, often enabling people to whether differences that would otherwise be explosive.

One of the most horrendous things that is happening in the United States is that people are allowing ideological commitments to blind them to the good will of others.  The mark of a person’s good will is not whether she is conservative or not.  It is not whether he is for abortion or not.  And so on.  Yet, vilifying the other has become the modus operandi of many with opposing views.  Needless to say, vilification destroys good will.  And good will destroyed rarely if ever becomes restored to its full measure again. 

One of the striking things about Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee is that both highly respected one another, although they fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.  Often enough, we cannot get that level of mutual respect between opposing parties in, say, a debate over affirmative action, where the issue of racial equality itself is the unyielding point of departure for both sides.  Needless to say, that is a most chilling truth. 

So what we have is more equality than ever.  But the moral climate is more chilling than ever—as good will, like the sands of an eroded beach, constantly retreats.  And the metaphor here is perhaps all too apt.  For the demands for first one thing and then another have become like hostile tidal waves relentlessly beating against the shores of life.  The gentle current that nurtured our fantasies and soothed our souls: that current now seems to be all but a thing of the past. 

Democracy without good will makes for a very unstable edifice, which will make for a very poignant case of winning the battle but losing the war.  This is because democracy without good will is rather like a plant without water: it will simply shrivel up and die, taking equality along with it.