Virtue, Governance And The State

Are we even permitted to discuss such a thing as virtue in America any more, let alone be capable of it? Sure, some discuss it. But I suspect much of our political class doesn't. And academics and elitists discuss it only as an exercise, not so much as a search for the practical application of same. To recognize virtue is to judge. Progressives today only permit judgment within the physical realm - wealth, mostly and how evenly it's distributed.

Historically, American was content to see wealth distributed based upon effort and openly discuss virtue as a spiritual matter, even if it was reserved mostly to the individual to judge for themselves within the confines of the Law in the end. Liberal Republicans today see themselves as the inheritors of Theodore Roosevelt's progressivism. But at the time, the Democrats, even as wrong-headed as they were on certain issues, were actually the more conservative constraining force on those Republicans. That opposing force doesn't exist today within the opposition party. It appears to only exist in some few genuine conservatives in DC and dwindling portions of the population at large.

In invoking Roosevelt as their inspiration, today's progressive Republicans fail to take into account those historical realities, which make their progressivism so dangerous. Unchecked and only fostering accommodation with a far more dangerous American Left today, America's road to statist hell could be paved with the best intentions of truly unenlightened but powerful men.

That's in reaction to an item by Mitchell Langbert. 

Moreover, and this is the point of greatest interest to me, I do not think that Americans share a common definition of virtue. On the one hand, the Progressives and secular humanists reject traditional Christianity, preferring instead a Social Gospel based on violent redistribution and capricious definitions of "positive rights," which are whatever the whims of Wall Street and the New York Times say they are. On the other hand, liberals (libertarians) and traditionalists of various kinds reject the socialism of the Democratic Party and the Rockefeller Republicans and believe in the traditional virtues of religion and freedom.

I do not think that a reconciliation is possible. America is no longer a nation with a shared sense of virtue. It is no longer a state.

Comments

[smitty]

The famous Dead Parrot was truly dead.
The American Virtue Parrot can awaken, e.g. 9/11.
So many of these types of argument are very snapshot in nature.

[Lisa Graas]

I'm very grateful to see you bringing this up, Dan. The virtuous suffer for their virtue in America as they do around the world. Freedom doesn't necessarily make a country virtuous. It merely gives citizens the opportunity to be virtuous. When we use our freedom to embrace corruption (and by corruption, I am referring to sin of all kinds), we lose our virtue in spite of our freedom. When we lose our virtue, we are more likely to embrace the slavery of socialism and thereby reject the freedom that empowers us to be virtuous.

When Pope John Paul II addressed Polish Catholics in Victory Square in Warsaw -- Catholics who were still under Soviet rule -- they shouted "We want God! We want God!" We have a choice, you see. We will be ruled primarily by God or we will be ruled primarily by the State. There is a third alternative -- anarchy -- which is always a temporary condition.

We were given a great gift by the Founders of the nation. We were given a Republic -- a system where we are primarily ruled by God, with a basic system of Government which ensures our most basic rights and which itself is limited from oppressing its citizens. But we have used our freedom to embrace corruption more and more deeply over two centuries, and so......we've headed into socialism.

We faithful Catholics are trying to turn back the tide of this problem within our own ranks. http://lisagraas.com/?p=1373

Also, I'm now homeschooling my three youngest children because of indoctrination in the schools. As individuals, we must do our part to defend the Republic. I can sit and blog all day long, but if my kids' minds are being corrupted, what good is it?

[MDr]

"liberals (libertarians)"

Something that's confused me for a long time (liberal labels today). Being long in the tooth, the "liberals" I remember from my youth, were unwavering defenders of Free Speech, among others. Today, "liberals" or probably more definitively labeled as "progressives" are actually Marxist/Communist and are anything but "classical" liberals.

At the risk of being branded a racist, can't we start calling a spade, a spade, and dispense with the liberal label?