Got Virtue? What's Old is New Again

Townhall.com ^ | October 26, 2014 | Kathryn Lopez

[Kaslin]

"I just saw the dirtiest sex tape I have ever seen in my entire life, and it stars the president's teenage daughter." -- Olivia Pope, a character on ABC's "Scandal"

This recent storyline on the typically cartoonish primetime drama "Scandal" was perhaps its most realistic -- even mundane. This is the air many young people breathe. Writing about the idea of temperance in a new book of essays, "The Seven Deadly Virtues," Andrew Stiles, himself a millennial, describes routine conversations as "often just an endless discourse on the question: 'How drunk was I last night?'"

This Snapchat-like snapshot of America in 2014 underscores how deeply complicated the work of renewing, rebuilding, repairing and replenishing family life is today.

Jonathan Last, editor of the "Virtues" essay collection, argues that these are "the seven cardinal modern virtues": freedom, convenience, progress, equality, authenticity, health and nonjudgmentalism. The problem with having these as our organizing framework is that they are largely superficial, concerned with "the outer self ... the part of ourselves that the world sees most readily," Last writes. They certainly are "insufficient" in fostering the moral supports a democracy needs.

For the fictional first daughter on "Scandal," her escape from the Secret Service was a desperate girl's declaration of independence, echoing a familiar staple of our times: the "good girl gone wild" that does no daughter any favors. In fact, judging by "the received wisdom, chastity is the thick-ankled stepsister of virtues," Matt Labash writes on his assigned virtue, with a flair for humor. "With an identical beginning and ending, along with the same number of syllables, chastity has the phonetic ring of the sexier virtue, charity. Except when you practice charity, you get pats on the back and deductions on your taxes. Being chaste just gets you odd looks and suspected of being a weirdo."

The TV character's drug-addled transaction with two boys that night was taped by one of them, because that's the way we are now. Instead of encountering one another and creation, we click a photo or record the scene. "We increasingly live amid the ether of 'the cloud' and the pixelation of the screen, forgetting that our greatest tools for communicating with each other as human beings are not our sleek smartphones and laptop computers, but our less-than-perfect faces, gestures and voices, even when we are at our most annoying," Christine Rosen writes in promoting fellowship. "It is only when we are face-to-face and physically present with one another that we can experience the kind of genuine fellowship that has been the hallmark of civilization."

Where, of course, do we traditionally learn how to love one another "at our most annoying"? In the family, of course. And today's family is not helped by the modern "virtues" rewriting, undervaluing and poisoning the wellsprings of human flourishing: life itself, marriage, the uniqueness of man and woman.

Talk of the family so often today gets wrapped up in debates about these contentious issues. But work is also an essential element of the family. Pope Francis often talks about unemployment being an evil we face today, even saying recently that there is no family without work -- speaking to both the hard work of family life and the practical and even spiritual need for work in the life of a family.

In Virginia, Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie has worked to promote a conversation about the dignity of work in his campaign stops and speeches.

"I don't think we make the case strongly enough from a conservative perspective that true social justice is enabling people to have the dignity of work, to be able to provide for themselves and their families, and that our policies make that possible," Gillespie told me in a recent visit to his Lorton, Virginia, campaign office. Economic polices need to help, among others, "a single mother who is facing the challenges of being a sole provider and a single parent," he said. "And that's particularly important if you believe in fostering a culture that respects and protects innocent human life," he said.

Work is never the sexiest of topics, but it is essential to our lives, and the life of the family. It's a scandal when we don't insist that it be taken more seriously.

Gillespie worries, among other things, that we may be losing our work ethic, and expressed gratitude for his parents' example of hard work.

Last writes of gratitude in his book: "It is gratitude that allows us to appreciate what is good, to discern what should be defended and cultivated." Facing a culture of changed values, what's old can be key to our renewal.

[PrincessB]

My female favorite character in any television I saw this year was the lead in a foreign drama. She wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack but she was earnest, hard working, and determined (the new boss said that he didn’t work with anyone with long hair, implying women without saying it. So, she cut her hair).

She didn’t sleep with anyone (ended up dating a coworker-but there was tons to this) or do anything to compromise her integrity except create some creative living quarters.

I wish we had shows with roles like this.

[stevie_d_64]

I have been championing the “virtues” idea for the last few years in politics these days...

If the voting public is not ready to fully understand the term, much less hold their candidates and incumbents to a very simple concept, then it is no real stretch to understand why our country is in the current social, much less economic teeter-totter we are in right now...

If you are not prepared to say YOU were wrong all these years and not ready to hold the political “leaders” in a particular political party accountable for the trash they keep foisting upon us, then I have nothing but the highest cynicism and general pessimism for those that just keep plodding along and accepting this as “just they way it is in politics” these days...

I would just assume fire them all, and start over, even the ones I like that might even be doing the “right” thing, regardless of their personal political future...Those people would understand and accept this concept...

But hey, the real trick is to get the voters to admit this deficiency and do their homework and fix their own houses first...

Waiting on the “But Steve, you’d fire Ted Cruz???”

Yep, in a heartbeat...And not because I want to be mean and do not think he is NOT doing his job, the way he said he would before he was elected...

No, those that get this concept WILL bounce back and be electable right out of the gate...they know they have credible, tangible and most agreeable positions to recover those offices...

The politicians this would effect most are the ones we know do not fit the ideas of personal sacrifice and virtue so desperately needed to correct the path this country is on right now...And the voters that support them, not holding them to a basic standard of moral, and “virtuous” existence...