virtue Archives - Common Sense with Paul Jacob

America’s founding fathers talked a lot about virtue. Freedom requires it; there can be no liberty without virtue, they said.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People,” insisted John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“No government can continue good but under the people’s control,” Thomas Jefferson explained, declaring that the citizens’ must “be informed by education what is right and wrong; to be encouraged in virtuous habits and deterred from vice.”

These were not isolated sentiments. But what did they mean?

It’s time to renew discussion, as rioting expands from Paris to Milan to . . . all over Europe. Here is one notion of a virtuous people: folks who, when they protest injustice or folly do not themselves foolishly commit injustice. Virtuous people do not run riot, wreak havoc, commit mayhem . . . just because they have grievances.

If they have complaints about farming regulation, or school funding, they do not burn down shops.

Or the Louvre.

Whatever “social justice” is, it too requires a virtuous population.

The fact that there is increased political violence suggests that some folks are not virtuous.

There’s this notion that in France, at least, violent protests are just a part of French culture. A culture warped by the disastrous French Revolution centuries ago? My bet is that, if we inquired deeper, we’d discover that this is not exactly so. That certain groups push violent protest every now and then for reasons of political goals that are not about either social justice or liberty.

We in America, who have been blessed with the freest society on the planet, are not quite as prone as Europeans to the vice of violent protest. But we are not immune, and we must start taking virtue — responsible self-government — seriously. Again.

Make America Responsible Again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Do the Right Thing – Later

Late in life, St. Augustine characterized his youthful, wayward ways in a droll prayer: “Lord, make me chaste and celibate — but not yet!”

Today, politicians of both parties understand the sentiment.

On Monday of last week, President Barack Obama unveiled his budget to Congress with this nicely worded maxim: “We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.”

Obama proposed a record budget of $3.8 trillion — including a deficit of well over $1 trillion. We can’t keep deficit spending like this, but we keep deficit spending like this.

Talking to reporters, Obama admitted that he and his friends in Congress “won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight.” He cited the need for more job creation as reason to continue to spend so much money.

Money we don’t have. So it will be borrowed. Against future taxes. Or future default.

Sure, the president is proposing a freeze. To start next fiscal year. And he’s proposing a bipartisan committee to cook up some way to balance the budget. The committee hasn’t been formed yet.

That seems like too much procrastination for the state of our nation. I think St. Augustine would agree with me: Virtue is not something you put off until next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.