Virtue: The Missing Enabler of the Republic

 

“A republic, if you can keep it.” Benjamin Franklin.

The blog builds on several others on virtue:

• Virtue, Wherefore Art Thou?
• Virtue: honor and Integrity
• Virtue Leadership and Power
• Virtue and Courtesy are Requirements for Effective Solution Development and a Healthy Society

When I first began this piece, it discussed virtue as the foundation of a republic. The image I selected was the construction of a skyscraper’s foundation. As I looked it though, a foundation, while critical, is static. Virtue is anything but static. That’s why I changed the title Power vice foundation and used a hot-air balloon filling up.

Virtue is fleeting, like the hot air in the balloon. The operator must constantly replenish it or the balloon will collapse and crash.

A hot-air balloon is that it floats on the winds. A pilot needs to understand the winds and where they are blowing and how strong they are. An expert pilot, like a sailing ship master, can maneuver a bit to get to a destination, but the winds and atmospheric conditions still significantly influence it.

The hot-air balloon is also fragile. If the skin is pierced, it can bring down the balloon. If the heat source fails, the balloon will also fail, eventually. They required constant attention while in flight from skilled and knowledgeable pilots.

A republic exists in a complex world with forces it often cannot control. It is like the hot-air balloon and virtue is the hot air that keeps it afloat. The citizens are the owner-operators that pilot the republic.

Franklin’s quote above to Elizabeth Willing Powel clearly illustrates the hot-air balloon metaphor.

Charles Beard (An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution) notwithstanding, the founders of the Republic conceived it from virtue. Was it perfect? Clearly not. A true virtuous Republic would have ended slavery. It would either provide some way for former slaves to earn a living or transported them back to Africa. Edward Rutledge, a representative from South Carolina, sings a powerful song in the musical 1776. The opening lyrics tell it all:

Molasses to rum to slaves, oh what a beautiful waltz

You dance with us, we dance with you

In molasses and rum and slaves

Who sail the ships out of Boston

Ladened with bibles and rum?

Who drinks a toast to the Ivory Coast?

Hail Africa, the slavers have come

New England with bibles and rum

The new country turned from pure virtue, but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Perhaps a trite way to look at it, but the founders would not have selected a republic as government if general virtue did not motivate them. Washington could have taken a crown as king. That he refused it and implemented The Society of the Cincinnati to help encourage other officers from the Continental Army to lay down the weapons and return to civil life. So while Rutledge’s song provides some support for Charles Beard and other revisionist historians, Washington’s and others’ actions show it was one dimension of the situation and perhaps not even a critical dimension.

The Republic’s balloon initial inflation was governed by virtue.

But back to Franklin’s “…if you can keep it.” Around the time of the American Revolution, Alexander Fraser Tytler wrote:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

I strongly suspect that Franklin and other founders were aware of Tytler’s thoughts and saw support for them in their studies of Greece and Rome. He supposedly wrote, “When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of our republic.” Although this veracity of the quote is subject to debate. Franklin and other clearly understood that virtue was key to preventing Tytler’s predictions from undermining the US government.

If we want to keep the Republic afloat, we must continue to replenish the balloon’s hot air through practicing virtue. Practice is the key word. Virtue is not a fire and forget weapon system. Like a TOW missile, it has to lock onto a target and the gunner must have the courage to remain on target even under heavy fire.

The Stanford Encyclopedia says of virtue ethics:

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent.

Keeping slavery was an example of rule utilitarianism. Maintaining a free republic is an exercise in virtue. But like the TOW gunner and the athlete, virtue must be practiced or we lose the target. To maintain the Republic, citizens must:

• Teach virtue at home and in schools. At home, parents must set the example of virtuous behavior. At school, teachers must set the example and teach virtue as opposed to virtue signaling.
• Media must provide accurate, reliable information to the citizens. More researched fact and far less opinion and memes. This is akin to our balloon pilot checking atmospheric conditions and look out for anything that can damage the balloon while in flight.
• Check the power of politicians. As George Washington noted, “Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.” We need term limits and comprehensive reform of Congress and the bureaucracy.

The opponents of the Republic are like a hydra, constantly regrowing new heads as other heads are destroyed. Citizens need to see the heads for what they are and protect their virtue and the Republic.