a virtue....................

 

Patience is a virtue no one has time for anymore.

-Ben Carlson

In support of publick virtue.............

 

A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the Whole Force of the Common Enemy.  While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader.  How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick virtue.

-Samuel Adams, from this 2/12/1779 letter

Uh-oh...................

 

All of the good forms of government are good only if the rulers are virtuous.

-Leighton and Lopez, Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers: The Economic Engine of Political Change

in conspiracy...................

 

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay, Self-Reliance

a daily challenge........................

 

     Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill.  "We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp," he writes.  "Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions."

     Virtue is something we do.

     It's something we choose.

     Not once, for Hercules's crossroads was not a singular event.  It's a daily challenge, one we face not once but constantly, repeatedly.  Will we be selfish or selfless?  Brave or afraid? Strong or weak? Wise or stupid?  Will we cultivate a good habit or a bad one?  Courage or cowardice?  The bliss of ignorance or the challenge of a new idea?

     Stay the same . . . or grow?

     The easy way or the right way?

-Ryan Holiday, Wisdom Takes Work

Misusing the language...............

 

     But did he see himself as ruthless?  Or as a ghoulish fiend?  This is unlikely.  For one thing, the Terror was an old Roman idea: If a roman legion did not do its duty, then indiscriminate punishment would be meted out.  For another, Robespierre preferred to preach virtue as Rousseau, his model, had done.  Virtue, of course, mandated dedication to family, to work, to civic zeal and the dreams of the revolution.  But it also meant getting rid of the enemies of virtue, whoever they were, wherever they were.  From as early as 1789, he trafficked in a world of conspiracy theories, warning about newly minted "patriots," old traitors and hypocrites ("who flatter you today to betray you tomorrow"), and the need for constant purges.  As the revolution wore on, as the gore deepened, as the daily tumbrels bore victims to the guillotine, Robespierre prophesied that for those who refused to adopt virtue, "the Razor of the republic" awaited.  The Terror, he also declared famously, is nothing, nothing "save justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.  It is an emanation of Virtue." . . .

. . . And even as head of the Twelve, he shrank from blood.  It has been duly noted that the only execution he ever attended was his own.

-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800

Emptiness.........................

 America’s elites fear and mistrust the American voter. They have lost faith in democracy, a system that in 2016 delivered the power of the presidency to the monstrous Trump, and they dream of a rising class of Platonic guardians, people exactly like themselves, with the right pedigree, the right opinions, the right manners, who rule not because they have won an electoral lottery but in perpetuity, as a reward for their superior virtue.

-Martin Gurri,  from here

thanks Michael

Hmmm..................

      Deeply idealistic—a moral people, Adams held, would elect moral leaders—he believed virtue the soul of democracy.  To have a villainous ruler imposed on you was a misfortune.  To elect him yourself was a disgrace.

-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

follow through.........................

 

   via

wise contrivance............................

      As the historian Daniel Howe puts it, the founding generation was "fed up with the Articles of Confederation and their reliance on uncoerced public virtue."  The moment had come, he continues, to consider whether "the vices could, through wise contrivance, be made to do the work of virtues."  Thinking through this apparent paradox would become the specialty of James Madison. . . .

       Not only was the structure of the United States flawed, but so was the classical conception behind it, he argued.  The time had come to accept that "all civilized societies are divided into different interests and factions, as they happen to be creditors or debtors—Rich or poor—husbandmen, merchants or manufacturers—members of different religious sects—followers of different political leaders—inhabitants of different districts—owners of different kinds of property etc etc"  But if "different interests and factions" were inevitable, then faction would have to be accepted and interest would have to be seen not as sinful but as natural.  What would a government designed to accommodate them look like?

-Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

Those were the days my friend.............

 The best place to begin to understand the views of the Revolutionary generation is with a look at the word "virtue."  This word was powerfully meaningful during the eighteenth century.  Today it is a mere synonym for morality, and also, anachronistically, a signifier of female chastity or the lack of it, as in the euphemistic phrase "a woman of easy virtue."  But for the Revolutionary generation, virtue was the essential element of public life.  Back then, it actually was masculine.  It meant putting the common good before one's own interests.  Virtue, writes the historian Joyce Appleby, was the "lynchpin" of public life—that it, the fastener that held together the structure.

-Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

judged.........................

 Although I am always minded to say good of what is good, and inclined to interpret favorably anything that can be so interpreted, still it is true that the strangeness of our condition makes it happen that we are often driven to good by vice itself—were it not that doing good is judged by intention alone.

-Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 2, Chapter 1

sale pending.......................

 The commercialisation of modern life has been the subject of lamentation ever since it was first remarked upon, and ambitious theories—commodity fetishism, conspicuous consumption, the affluent society, and countless lesser attempts—have arisen from the natural revulsion that intellectuals feel towards the "getting and spending" of others.  But something new seems to be at work in the contemporary world—a process that is eating away the very heart of social life, not merely by putting salesmanship in place of moral virtue, but by putting everything—virtue included—on sale.  The cynic, said Oscar Wilde, is the one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  And in a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas he described sentimentality as "the bank holiday of cynicism". Wilde's quips tend to be more exciting that truthful.  These, however, are exact.  Cynicism and sentimentality are two ways in which things of value are demoted to things with a price.

-Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture

This disposition......................

 This disposition, to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue, and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.

-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

lustre.................................

 . . . the candidates for fortune too frequently abandon the paths of virtue, for unhappily, the road which leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in very opposite directions.  But the ambitious man flatters himself that, in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the lustre of his future conduct will entirely cover, or efface, the foulness of the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. . . . But, though they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the happiness which they expect to enjoy it in.

-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Wandering damage.................

 The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.

-as extracted from here

a common vice...........

      I should be prone to excuse our people for having no other pattern and rule of perfection than their own manners and customs, for it is a common vice, not of the vulgar only but of almost all men, to fix their aim and limit by the ways to which they were born.

Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works, Book 1, Chapter 49

most universal cause....................

This disposition to admire, and almost worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.  That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are only due wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.

-Adam Smith, The Theory Of Moral Sentiments 

Step outside..................................

      Smith in his book and with his life is telling us how to live.  Seek wisdom and virtue.  Behave as if an impartial spectator is watching you.  Use the idea of an impartial spectator to step outside yourself and see yourself as others see you.  Use that vision to know yourself.  Avoid the seductions of money and fame, for they will never satisfy.

-Russ Roberts,  How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life:  An Unexpected Guide To Human Nature And Happiness

A good question asked.....................

 Shouldn't we accept delayed gratification as a virtue and not a punishment?

-Jon Hanson