Virture Never Goes Out of Style–But Nations Can

Virtue Never Goes Out Of Style—But Nations Can

By Paul B. Skousen

 

 

The John Edwards soap opera just won’t go away. His affair, the cover-up and lies, his cancer-stricken wife, the divorce, the baby, the tell-all book, haven’t we had enough?

 

Evidently not.

 

While the $400-haircut was getting a little off the top from mistress Frances Quinn Hunter, Edwards was setting himself up to become just one more famous name in a growing mass of infamy.

 

Can any of us ever again hear “Bill Clinton” without also thinking “Monica Lewinski”?

 

Didn’t we all applaud the wife of Tiger Woods for giving new meaning to the term “long drive”?

 

Do any of us watch Dave Letterman without wondering who on the staff is high on his Top Ten List?

 

And just what happens if the price isn’t right for one of Bob Barker’s beautiful models? He’s retired now, so we may never know. 

 

But at least former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer tried to give a little back when he made his generous investment of $80,000+ to New York’s prostitution industry. And I wonder, did they charge him sales tax? One can only hope.   

 

These scandals certainly attract a lot of attention and rouse our ire for a while. But why should they? After all, isn’t our united indignation oddly juxtaposed against the $11 billion spent each year to bring that very SAME kind of behavior vicariously into our households via the Internet?  

 

Every second there is $3,200 spent on pornography. Every second there are 28,000 Internet users viewing pornography. And every 30 minutes, a new porn video is created.

 

What was darkly forbidden just 25 years ago is today rampant, popular and widespread from coast to coast. Corporate sponsors are reaping billions from their porn-happy clientele, and there seems no stopping its spread.

 

This modern-day version of Rome’s “bread and circus” detractions from the most pressing national problems kept the Founding Fathers worried for quite some time.

 

A look into history shows that there were heated and sometimes violent debates among the 13 colonies between 1775 and 1776 over the issue of morality.

 

Quoting Dr. W. Cleon Skousen in The Five Thousand Year Leap (pg. 41), “For many thousands of Americans the big questions of independence hung precariously on the single, slender thread of whether or not the people were sufficiently ‘virtuous and moral’ to govern themselves. Self-government was generally referred to as ‘republicanism,’ and it was universally acknowledged that a corrupt and selfish people could never make the principles of republicanism operate successfully. As Franklin wrote: ‘Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.’ … George Washington later praised the American Constitution as the ‘palladium of human rights,’ but pointed out that it could survive only ‘so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people.’”

 

Dr. Skousen further explains:

 

          Morality is identified with the Ten Commandments and obedience to the Creator’s mandate for “right conduct,” but the early Americans identified “public virtue” as a very special quality of human maturity in character and service closely akin to the Golden Rule. As a modern historian epitomized it:

 

          “In a Republic, however, each man must somehow be persuaded to submerge his personal wants into the greater good of the whole. This willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interest for the good of the community — such patriotism or love of country — the eighteenth century termed public virtue…. The eighteenth century mind was thoroughly convinced that a popularly based government ‘cannot be supported without virtue’.”

 

Self-Doubts

 

          The people had an instinctive thirst for independence, but there remained a haunting fear that they might not be “good enough” to make it work.

 

          These self-doubts were actually the eye of the hurricane during those final pre-revolutionary years when Americans were trying to decide whether they had the moral capacity for self-government. Great names of later years were among the doubters in those pre-revolutionary days. John Jay, Robert Morris, Robert Livingston, and even John Dickinson were among them. Their doubts gradually diminished as their patriotic indignation was aroused by the harsh and sometimes brutal policies of the British crown. They were also moved by the powerful expressions of faith and confidence pouring forth from men of “admired virtue” such as John Adams, George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and Josiah Quincy.

 

          Spirits continued to rise so that by the spring of 1776, thousands of confident voices were heard throughout the colonies affirming that there was sufficient “public virtue” in the people to make republican principles work successfully.

 

A Warning from the Founders

 

          At the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Samuel Adams, who is sometimes called the “father of the revolution,” wrote to Richard Henry Lee:

 

          “I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.”

 

          John Adams pointed out why the future of the United States depended upon the level of virtue and morality maintained among the people. He said:

 

          “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

 

          Samuel Adams knew the price of American survival under a Constitutional form of government when he wrote:

 

          “The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it. while, on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though the form of our Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves.”

 

Conclusion

See The Five Thousand Year Leap for the remainder of Dr. Skousen’s discussion of public virtue in Principle #2. 

 

Despite the fact that the John Edward’s, Bill Clinton’s, Tiger Wood’s, David Letterman’s and Bob Barker’s of life will always appeal to the tabloid mentality of most Americans and get us shaking our heads at such infamous violations of public virtue, the truth is that all of us are failed humans.

 

And don’t we feel fortunate our failings don’t dominate the headlines as do theirs? 

 

But there is a great deal more at stake for us as a nation than just them losing trust or an election or sponsors or ratings.

 

If not stopped in our individual lives, the plague of corruption filtering into every corner of our free society is guaranteed to one day complete its work in a most devastating and irreversible way.

 

And then—quite suddenly and without question—when everything great about America is falling apart all around us, “public virtue” will make a whole lot of really good sense.

 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 11:29 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.