In 1998, the National Commission on Civic Renewal issued its final report entitled A Nation of Spectators. (I was the deputy director of the Commission; Bill Galston was the director.) It had a website: static and simple by today’s standards, but fully capable of presenting the report and some important ancillary information. The website lost its server as the years passed, and I did not keep a PDF of the report–although I do have a stack of very nice bound printed copies in my office. A Nation of Spectators had an influence on the civic engagement field. People periodically ask for it, and today I discovered it online thanks to the wonders of the Wayback Machine (an archive of the World Wide Web).

So here is the website of the National Commission and an html copy of A Nation of Spectators. The graphics and formatting have been lost because of the way the server was reorganized, but the content remains. The authors were:

co-chairs

William J. Bennett

Senator Sam Nunn

commissioners

Elaine L. Chao

The Heritage Foundation

John F. Cooke

Walt Disney Company

Jean Bethke Elshtain

University of Chicago

Henry J. Fernandez

Yale Law School

Mary Ann Glendon

Harvard Law School

Peter C. Goldmark, Jr.

International Herald Tribune

Lloyd V. Hackley

Character Counts! Coalition

Anna Faith Jones

Boston Foundation

Michael S. Joyce

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Richard D. Land

Southern Baptist Convention

Edwin Lupberger

Entergy Corp

Michael Novak

American Enterprise Institute

Barbara Roberts

Harvard University

Ismar Schorsch

Jewish Theological Seminary

William Shore

Share Our Strength

Arthur R. Taylor

Muhlenberg College

Gail L. Warden

Henry Ford Health System

Robert L. Woodson, Sr.

National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise