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What is the Virtucon Project?
I have been forcibly reminded by recent mega–threads that there are conservatives who do not think the size and scope of the state is a pressing issue. Some of these folks, approaching things using the lens of virtue ethics, have a different diagnosis of what is wrong with society, a different idea of what needs to be done, and a different approach to what is permissible to achieve these ends. They are suspicious of markets, and fear that a focus on small government is not just electorally disastrous, but fatally distracts from the real issues facing the country.
Below I set out — largely in the form of collected paraphrases — what I take to be the virtucon project, in so far as I understand it. There are gaps, and I have no doubt made mistakes. The first paragraph, in particular, which is entirely of my own making, might be objected to as too rough and ready a summary. I have, however, tried to lay out the virtucon case in good faith, and invite corrections and additions.
The Virtucon Case
Virtue is those habits or dispositions of action that promote human flourishing. People are not innately virtuous, but they have the natural capacity for virtue. Because virtue involves habit, it is something learned through practice and repetition, and therefore requires a society that provides the appropriate incentives and correctives until immaturity is overcome and the habit is internalised. Human flourishing, or human excellence, or the proper end of being human, is not a choice but an objective property of what it is to be human — a key component of which is rationality. A good society is one which advances human flourishing; and here “good” is also an objective standard.
America today is wrestling with new and sometimes terrifying questions about justice and obligation. Deep social and spiritual problems have arisen in our modernist, technocratic, democratic state. Gripping moral questions are before us. Frightening moral challenges are looming over our heads. Many, or most, people are miserable, lonely and vicious. People are unprepared to tolerate the consequences of free markets in a technologically expanding world. Alienation is a big problem, exacerbated by large markets and a sort of specialization. Our society is having a hard time grappling with the tension between our egalitarian social ideals and the sizable inequality that free markets create. The Western world is falling prey to fear and envy.
A complex, careful analysis is needed to diagnose and respond to these challenges. We need to answer the big questions about human excellence and human community, family, life and the complex relationship between political freedom and virtue. Direct moral reasoning is required. This diagnosis is a massive project. We need to understand what the moral challenges are that make the administrative state seem necessary to us; for that we need an analysis of markets and human good. We need more complete answers to a deeper problem than the size of the state.
We need to offer a complete and satisfactory vision to the American public. We have to be armed with a better, truer, more ennobling vision. We need to assess the current state of our society and craft a message Americans will find compelling. We need to find ways to present a vibrant, hopeful conservative vision of what our society can be, and make them believe that it can be realized. We need to find some new ways to pitch traditional morals.
The highest goals are human excellence, happiness, virtue and a thriving society. Human good involves living a life of activity of the soul in accord with reason, habituating oneself in the virtues. Why have a government at all if it’s not going to be focused on the good of human beings? People in authority have special obligations to discern the good as well as they can. Historically, rulers took it for granted that they were obliged to be interested in the goodness and thriving of their people. We have to balance the various goods and claims of justice to the best of our ability. Good habituation is necessary to virtue, and that depends to some extent on having a healthy culture. The virtuous man doesn’t need laws to tell him not to indulge in vices, but — on an earlier point in the path to virtue — before he’s developed proper discipline, he might be tempted by those vices, and that might derail his moral development well before he has the opportunity to be virtuous.
The virtucon differentiates between freedoms that are supportive of virtue and ones that contribute little or nothing to the virtuous person’s existence, while potentially derailing some from the path when they’ve hardly begun. The democratic process can be used to regulate or ban certain vicious things. We can’t trust the common people to be good, especially in a state where they are morally malformed by a degraded culture. The aim is to build a culture that reinforces virtue and goodness.
Markets can fail. The outcomes of free markets are not necessarily just nor conducive to human good. There are many potentially good reasons for wanting to impede particular effects of free markets, or just to persuade people on a widespread level that markets are ruining their lives. The market approach to sex, marriage and babies robs these phenomena of their context as part of an organic whole and forms an attack on human dignity. It’s quite hard for people to develop the wisdom and maturity to see this at the ages at which it matters. Societies are obliged to find ways to mediate the natural tensions that arise when we try to recognize the infinite worth of persons and also allow some to enjoy far greater privilege than others.
The Tea Party strategy of “less, less, less” does not work. Most people aren’t too worried about things like religious liberty issues. The perception is that Republicans are selfish, racist plutocrats who want to screw over poor people. The libertarian populists and reformicons have some productive ideas, plausibly responsive to the problems and concerns that people actually have. But the main thing is to contextualize what is being offered within a larger vision and to help people understand what that is.
Some Questions
What are the terrifying, gripping, deep, frightening moral questions we are facing?
How is the task of rethinking and reformulating morality/society to be done, and by whom?
Is the criticism of markets and/or modernity and/or enlightenment individualism an inextricable part of the virtucon project?
What is the point of winning elections? Is the virtucon project a political one, an apolitical one, or a supra-political one? How is reformicon incrementalist instrumentalism consistent with a virtue-based society?
If I promise to promote courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, proper ambition, patience, truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, modesty and righteous indignation can I also abolish the Department of Education?
Published in General
Fantastic post. Good attempt at the Ideological Turing Test (I think). I can’t wait to see where this goes.
genferei: Even if you *don’t* “…promise to promote courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, proper ambition, patience, truthfulness, wittiness, friendliness, modesty and righteous indignation…” you both may and can abolish HHS, EPA, VA, etc. Small is, indeed, beautiful – and the more local answers to meeting local needs of the truly vulnerable – the better…(And, yes, I am – in some senses – a “values voter”; but I also know we’re broke, and the Feds haven’t got a clue.)
Good post and idea. I was getting a little tired of libertarianism being treated like the only specimen under the microscope. I hope to read deeper and have expanded thoughts later.
No, you haven’t captured anything except your own fantasy. You’re trying to paint a picture of SoCons as control freaks who want to behave like kings in forcing everyone to behave as they deem appropriate. I’m sorry, but I’m more than a little tired of this characterization by libertarians. When you use phrases like “many or most people are miserable, lonely and vicious” or go on and on about moral analysis as something that will be imposed from above, you are not even in the ballpark. As I pointed out on Mike’s thread the other day, if we have our traditional freedoms and some restrictions (like on drugs and prostitution) we will have a decent society in which to raise our children and teach them ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS the things they need to know. No Christian wants to force people to be good. People have to choose to be good, but they do that in the context of a decent society with decent values (religious freedom, free speech, marriage) that allow this to happen. How I wish we could give this debate a rest!
Funny – I’ll bet half of Ricochet (or at least the ones who read Rachel’s libertarian posts) have paused from those threads to focus on taking the conversation into different directions. I know I’ve been thinking about a new direction I wanted to go, and you came up with a very thoughtful venture on your own.
Before I plunge into your post, let me compliment you – well done.
If KC likes your post, maybe I’m too hard on it!!!!! But I have to admit to being pretty sensitive to the subtext. It’s not that there’s nothing in there that we want, but the subtext suggests a lot more condescension and force than SoCons would sign on to. Most of us just want the basics so that it is possible to teach our kids good values without a lot of opposite messages coming from the culture. Right now we’re living in a society founded on lies and misconceptions about “equality” “rights” and especially about sex that work against the freedoms we most value, the ones that allow us have a stable society and to give our children our values. That’s why I think the post feels wrong.
Feel free to respond as it strikes you, Merina! I’m admittedly sympathetic to what (I think) genferei is trying to do … that is, if we can’t reach understanding on one level, let’s see if we can go deeper to see where the difference is. That’s what I was going to do myself, but let’s play this out and see where it goes.
I could not distinguish these sentences from Rachel’s.
Great job!
Midge, I sure could. I pointed out a few above, but I think the control subtext is way off the mark. Still, I think it’s a good faith effort anyway. But after all this somewhat acrimonious debating, maybe I’m becoming as sensitive as libertarians!!!!!!
Ha–if only someone could stop me from responding as things strike me! Might be a good thing sometimes! Please refrain from liking this comment. Thank you.
I take issue with being called sensitive!
Well, that wasn’t my intention, hence my admission up front that I may have made mistakes and that I welcome corrections and additions.
All the words after my amateur attempt to explain pretty classical virtue ethics are close paraphrases of what I took to be explanations of the “virtue conservative” (which I am not using as a synonym for “social conservative”) approach. The words “many or most people are miserable, lonely and vicious” is a direct quote, although it’s difficult from the context to know exactly how it was meant.
I was trying to capture the logic of the virtucon approach, and show why it is permissible and logical from within that approach to see laws as leading to virtue, and, indeed, how this is different from imposing virtue, and from tyranny. The call to moral analysis was repeatedly made in the source material.
I freely admit that the post is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. I earnestly request assistance to improve my understanding.
Ha!
Thanks–I appreciate this. My first response was to the Frankenstein part, which, when we disagree with someone creeps in, but I see that you genuinely trying to do more.
No Christian wants to force people to be good. People have to choose to be good, but they do that in the context of a decent society with decent values (religious freedom, free speech, marriage) that allow this to happen. How I wish we could give this debate a rest!
If this were really true, then Christians and libertarians would have essentially no daylight between them. But it’s demonstrably not true, just by looking at the number of “values voter” issues involve laws that stop people from doing things that don’t directly harm other people.
For instance, if there was a proposed law that would drastically curb the amount of pornography on the internet, would you go to the battlements to oppose it?
Perhaps you would, and welcome to the fight. But if so, I would say you’re an atypical social conservative. Most socons I have talked to think a severe limit on things like pornography are good things and something the government should pursue, even if it’s not their highest priority.
In 200 words or fewer, I tried to quote a few sentences that both made a coherent whole and really reminded me of Rachel.
Also, you’re her mom. You’re acting on insider information ;-)
Christians don’t force people to be good, but that doesn’t mean we have to favor forced temptation either.
Good point, Midge!!!!
Christians don’t force people to be good, but that doesn’t mean we have to favor forced temptation either.
Sorry for messing up the attribution Merina, when I tried to block quote, something haywired. So I’ve pasted the relevant bit above.
So in this statement, because you’re not in favor of “forced temptation”, you’re willing to use the power of government to limit the power of people to do something they want to do (post pornographic stuff on the internet), but you claim that isn’t “forcing people to be good”.
I would respectfully disagree. That seems like exactly what it is. It sounds like you’re justifying it by saying “the prevalence of pornography on the internet creates an attractive nuisance -forced temptation, if you will, so we are justified in using the law to stop people from putting pornography on the internet”. But social conservatives always have good reasons for the limitations they want to enact.
But you can’t go around curtailing peoples ability to do things you don’t like, and at the same time, claim that your’e against “forcing people to be good”.
Addendum to #19.
This isn’t about saying social conservatives are wrong. They may not be. Social Conservatism may actually lead to a better, more just society than libertarianism.
But they need to argue that. And they need to quit claiming they value freedom and small government “just as much as libertarians”, because it’s not true.
Like I say, a social conservative society may be better than a libertarian one, but it won’t be more free.
Law curtails people’s ability to do things all the time. That’s what law is. People still have lots of choices. Do you really think there should be a free-for-all of child porn on the internet for example? If not, then you think people’s ability to do some things should be curtailed.
It depends on your definition of freedom, S. Is a person who is addicted to–well, anything–more free? No–we all pay the price for that. So if social mores and yes, some laws, ensure that fewer people make choices to become addicted when they are young and stupid, or even old and stupid, are we more free? I have often made the point that even if something is illegal, people can still choose to do it, and sometimes law can play with the levels of punishment. For example, marijuana use could be decriminalized but not made legal. This allows law an public policy to discourage behavior without punishing it greatly or at all.
Yes, all that is true, but beside the point. I weighed because you very specifically stated that Christians “don’t want to force people to be good”, and I pointed out an example where I thought you would really like to control people’s choices to do something that doesn’t directly harm anyone else, and you confirmed that I was right–you’d like to control people’s access to porn on the internet. Which can be a good idea (it’s not), there are some arguments to be made in favor of it, but you cannot say Christians “don’t want to force people to be good” without expecting people to point out all the cases where they do indeed want to force people to be good. (Invocations of child porn should be considered a Godwin, and ignored).
Ah, “It depends on your definition”.
I personally don’t see the difference between “decriminalization” and “making something legal”, but even assuming that there is, that still places you as less freedom oriented than a libertarian.
It’s very easy to square this circle…just stop claiming the original poster’s description of virtuecons as a “fantasy”, and admit that virtuecons, socons, and many christians care more about a “good society” than about personal liberty.
Once that’s done, we can discuss honestly which way society should go. Should we value freedom more, or value sensible restrictions on freedom that help engender a good society (like your example of making highly addictive drugs illegal–what do you think about cigarettes?)
Including addicted to God, or work, or music?
I think we can have good addictions and bad addictions. The good addictions nobody complains about and so they get overlooked. If we only notice addictions when they are harmful, then of course we’ll conclude that all addictions are harmful. But are they, really?
It’s interesting to note the meaning of “addiction” has changed over time. It used to mean just a powerful habit, whether good or bad, and that still is a possible usage. But most people these days, overlooking the good powerful habits, use it to mean harmful powerful habits – except when they don’t: many people with a caffeine habit will call it an addiction, yet rely on their habit to be more alert and productive.
Or Ricochet? You’re right Midge, some addictions are bad. And some are part good and part bad. But I don’t think we as a society have a duty make it easier to develop bad addictions.
No, invocations of child porn are not a Godwin. It shows that we agree that access to some things should be difficult or impossible. Christians and all sorts of cons care about personal liberty but we put it in context. That’s why the nuances of the law should be used–some things legalized, some things permitted (no laws about them) some decriminalized, some criminalized.
Who does think we have a duty to make it easier to develop bad addictions?
The question is instead how far should we go in our duty to ensure that others don’t develop bad addictions.
(Also, Christians and coffee. Kind of amusing.)
Yup–that is the question.