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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
That’s the whole point. Too often Libertarians err on the side of no government rather than limited competing government. At the Federal level there is very little daylight between Libertarians and conservatives. However, conservatives are much more comfortable with government power at the local level because the power of local governments can be checked by competition with other jurisdictions. It is ironic that the political ideology that trumpets markets the most is the more hostile to markets in the political sphere.
Jim,
Since I’m on a roll, I’ll comment on my own post (how is that for annoying).
Virtue => Right => Government
Freedom Liberty Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty
Now I really like it.
Regards,
Jim
D.C. McAllister has a very good essay on this over at the Federalist.
Can the Libertarians concede the point that it will be difficult to politically achieve reductions in government when so much of our society is dependent on government because of the breakdown of the family, lack of work ethic, and a sense of entitlement?
Frankly, I think of myself as a very positive person. Positive in my faith in the American people and the virtue that is innate in each and every one of us. (Well, ok, most of us.) Positive about the American belief in goodness and sense of fair play. And I’m positive about freedom, with the sensible limits placed by our positively brilliant founders.
I feel that the reports of the death of American Virtue have been greatly exaggerated.
Not much negativity here.
Ironically, even the passage of Gay Marriage is evidence of American goodness. (And naivete unfortunately.) Its proponents made a moral argument and appealed to our sense of fair play. They also appealed to that thing in us that opposes racism.
The left outflanked us on this one, by exploiting American virtue.
The left is evil, but the American people are fundamentally ok.
We also won a round because of American Virtue. Remember welfare reform? Conservatives had been trying for decades to change welfare, citing the costs and the fact that people were freeloading.
Then, in the 90’s we changed the message. We started pointing out that welfare was hurting the people it intended to help. Then we started getting traction and eventually welfare reform became law.
Hey, I just thought of this! We shrunk the government first and virtue took care of itself! It was the best thing that ever happened to the welfare recipients.
Food for thought, folks!
I have never heard of the term “virtucon” until this post. If it was discussed in a libertarian/conservative thread, I try to stay away from those. I also try to stay away from all the variant strains of conservatism and libertarianism. We do ourselves no good with these divisions.
Anyhow, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the first sentence under the “The Virtucon Case” heading:
“Virtue is those habits or dispositions of action that promote human flourishing.”
From the Catholic Catechism we read, “that virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good”.
Here is an important distinction to be made, I think.
To flourish is to be doing well, to be very successful, to do something in an excited and proud way. This is distinctly different from doing the good.
To do the good, “the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions”.
“The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good.”
In this aspect, with regards to the OP, is this controversial?
I’m sorry, but what do men and angels have in common? God I suppose but I would not say Libertarians are God. And what do angels and government have in common? Liberals/progressives view government as God so I guess I can push the envelope on that common. However…..
As I’ve read and come to understand, angels are spiritual beings existing on a higher plane than men and their mere constructs.
I’m not sure this diagram makes sense. Maybe I’m not understanding what your meaning of an angel is.
AIG — You need to stop tossing around “The Pope!!!!” as your shorthand for theocratic rule.
Simply because I find it really really annoying.
I also view it as a sign of mental laziness.
No one here at Ricochet has ever advocated for the Pope to rule us in all things. Not even the crazy papists, of which I am one.
I doubt you will agree with me, though. Just wanted to share.
We agree with that. No concession necessary. We just don’t see how it’s possible to fix the problems of government by using government. You may not mean that, but we can’t avoid reading statement such as these this way.
Most libertarians have two modes. First, they like to give the correct answer: Government is the problem. Then, when appropriate, they can enter pragmatic space: What is possible, in the near term, given reality.
Since libertarians love their theoretical space so much, it’s sometimes hard to break them out of it, especially on theory posts, which is where most of the attacks on libertarians have been coming from.
Libertarians like myself are perfectly happy to talk about what’s possible given political reality. But given true reality, nearly everyone is being optimistic about what might be possible.
I was one of those that fell on the virtue side. I don’t have the time to give your post a full reading but I will say that you have a fallacy up front. Just because we see virtue as a problem does not mean we don’t also see the the size and scope of the state as another problem. Speaking for myself only, the problem I see with Libertarianism is that it’s a singular rigid ideology that has no flexibility. Some issues require reduction of the state to solve them, some issues require a more active state to resolve them. Libertarinism is locked into a singular remedy. But yes, overall I would like to see a reduction of the administrative state while seeking a virtue culture. When I have more time I’ll come back. Unfortunately as has happened in several of these discussions, a post seems to have run its course by the time I can fully participate.
True, but libertarians don’t escape that problem either. After all, a government powerful enough to prevent harm and punish harmers is also powerful enough to cause harm and punish victims.
Centrally true. I think conservatives value the harm principle too; we just don’t limit it to direct harm.
Also, there’s a fine line between promoting virtue and preventing the harm of vice. Who’s to say which is virtue and which is vice? Who’s to say which is promotion and which is prevention? Democracy and trial and error, primarily.
I think it’s more accurate to describe the premise as: the promotion of virtue is a primary goal of society. Government being a legitimate and useful tool of society, it is not necessarily an illegitimate role for government to promote virtue.
I apologize if I missed this part of the discussion – life has been intruding a lot lately – but I still don’t understand why the general statement “society should promote virtue” prompts anyone to assume that this is a demand for government to impose anything.
From my point of view, I do believe that society should promote virtue, but that should happen through two main institutions … through religion, and through education. Rachel is on solid ground in arguing that the Greeks taught virtue through education – that was its self-professed primary purpose.
The modern education system doesn’t, of course. Since the public school system is run by the government, everyone assumes that government isn’t allowed to promote religion or virtue or take sides on any moral issue – meaning, therefore, that schools can’t promote virtue. Government involvement invalidates the original purpose of education.
All that’s left is indoctrination (pun intended).
I don’t know why, but as I neared the end of the “The Virtucon Case” section, Plato’s Republic and The Hunger Games popped into my head. Really.
Looks like a sloppy use of the word, “force”. You know, if you refuse to hand over your wallet to a mugger, you’re “forcing” him to go elsewhere and rob someone else.
If the shoe fits…
From a subsequent comment: “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.”
Those darn opposite messages. We need to do something about that…
This isn’t even hypothetical, this is an accurate description of the world we live in. To argue for the “the authority to promote Rachel’s definition of virtue” without noting that the slippery slope has *already happened* is to completely undercut your own argument.
If Rachel and Merina could get their heads around that part of this discussion, we could have a constructive discussion.
One thing everyone can agree on is that the Virtucon project is hard to understand. At first glance, the project sounds like (not saying it is, just sounds like) an intrusive government proposal coupled with a mistrust of freedom and markets. I am open to the idea that it isn’t, and am trying to be as fair as I can.
When introducing a proposal that sounds the way this one does, is it wise to season it with potshots at libertarians? Does that help your case, or increase trust?
Don’t worry Tuck, permanent Republican dominance is just around the corner. If we just will it just right…
And Republican dominance has always lead to getting exactly what virtucons want, right? Remember 2000-2006 when the government shrank, abortions ended and the gay marriage movement ceased to be?
Excellent point.
Take your time! But I — and no doubt many others — would greatly appreciate it if you could lay out a little more of the positive case for virtue conservatism.
In the same way that some have assigned you reading in respect of libertarianism, perhaps you — or others — could suggest some primers on virtue ethics, which I can see is tripping up some commenters (including, no doubt, myself). As you say, Aristotelian-type thinking is kind of against the grain of much conservative thought.
I think an emphasis on virtue might make a great number of people think of the town elders in Footloose. Then, watch the Road Runner cloud as they run the other way.
Very well put.
This is why at least some libertarians slice categories with the clearer idea of “initiation of physical force”, “aggression”, or some such. “Harm” is too fuzzy an idea.
People would also consider the source. We’re the party that destroyed the economy, banned the incandescent light bulb, regulated appliances into non-functionality and brought you the granny-fondling TSA*.
Peggy Noonan had it about right when she said, “What are they going to do next, give us cholera?”
For some reason the voters don’t trust us.
Yeah, we did all that, but the voters need to have their virtue improved?
*genferei deserves credit for that phrase.
There is a glimmer of hope though, due to Obama being even worse. If we squeeze into the White House in 2016, and restore robust economic growth through (dare I say it?) free markets and a sound dollar, people might become slightly more willing to listen to us. Though I wouldn’t bet on it.
LOL. Yeah, establishment, right-progressive Republicans are exactly as likely to enact the libertarian manifesto as the virtucon manifesto. Actually, the virtucons have it better, as the right-progressives are in the same camp.