Make Virtue Great Again
By O. Henry Swartzentruber
This morning, my son turned five. Maximilian David—happy birthday, buddy. His birthday request was simple: heart-shaped pancakes from his mother, like last year. His memory is sharp. Emily and I marveled at how unusually good his memory can be. He remembers conversations, routines, and details that adults like me miss.
“But we need to work on the virtue,” is how I ended the conversation. My wife smiled, knowingly.
That exchange points to a current issue beyond our kitchen. The home used to be the laboratory for virtue development. In US politics, we have reached the culmination of intelligence and are failing miserably at developing virtuous people. Let's look at the politics. One political party is in a so-called civil war, in part because they are concerned with the virtues (or lack thereof) of their leader. We have another party that doesn't speak in these terms or seemingly care; missing the script. Anything the other side does is bad and immoral. We are remarkably good at cultivating intelligence and uncertain what intelligence is supposed to serve (hint: you are supposed to serve others). Modern man prizes academic achievement and technical ability. We measure those things. Virtue is harder to quantify, yet is the most important idea humans have. Without virtue, we end up valuing the achievements of Luigi Mangione, the Unabomber, and Pablo Escobar - brilliant, yet vacuous.
A recent realization to me, with the rise of the socialist candidates on the left and insanity on the right: that as religion recedes in our country, politics takes its place. Earlier this month, WSJ-editorialist and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan framed it perfectly in her weekly piece. Increasingly, our modern American faith is now largely built around partisanship and policy ideas. If you could just see the perfection in tweaking this particular public policy, we will have reached the culmination of perfection in this country.
Look how our irreligious vacuum is being filled. Socialism is the hottest movement on the left since the 1920s. And this time, we are told they are finally going to get it right. What used to be Bernie Sanders hollering from the sidelines must now be taken seriously as a factor in our politics and certainly within the Democratic Party. A recent poll reported 34% of Ds and Democratic-leaning adults identify as “democratic socialists.” That is maybe 15-20% of our electorate (!!) which won’t be depressed by the success of Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed or Florida's Angie Nixon, who both won their Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate by racking up huge margins in brilliant progressive enclaves and university towns. Wisconsin's State Assemblywoman Francesca Hong barely lost in an upset. Socialism’s opponents may feel there is safety in its poor track record. Maybe. But we are again promised this time around, our newest version will be better. This modification to how health care is paid for and procured (or college education, or housing, or childcare) will be perfect. Trust me.
This confidence is what happens when politics becomes an identity and a substitute for religion. That is a heavy burden to place on politics. A republic needs citizens with virtue, not mere intelligence. We need citizens capable of self-restraint. We do not appear to be cultivating a moral and just people. Democrats seemingly can't use the words correctly. Republicans appear to be losing internally.
The ancient idea of virtue was never about perfection. My D friend Dave Crooks quoted his dad recently on The OJ's Juice podcast saying "ya know, my dad said there was only one perfect guy, and they crucified him." Indeed, Dave, and all of our models in Western Civilization are modeled after his life. We must encourage habits that make a person capable of living well: courage, temperance, justice, prudence, humility, and generosity. Those habits have to be taught, practiced, and reinforced. What made the Greatest Generation so great? Their sacrifice, not principally intelligence.
I hope my son is smart, sure, but more importantly I want him to become good. AND I want a government that at a minimum understands that. Currently, it does not. Max needs to learn that keeping his word matters. That how he treats someone who cannot help him -- that matters. That self-control, governing himself, is freedom. Yes, Max got pancakes this morning. My wife then went back to the quiet, unpaid (!!) work of building his soul. I want Max to become the kind of person worth becoming, not that "he was really smart". Never stop working on virtue, my friends. Make Virtue Great Again.