A Defense of Virtue, redux

I published this in 2015 and it still resonates

May 21, 2026

Friends, it’s time to stir the pot again. I used to be a decent writer, you know. I published this in 2015, and here it is again, lightly edited.

We have wrought this upon ourselves, America. We have stripped our republic of its essential virtue and we’re left with nothing but a utopia fit not for men, but only for angels.

Not my words: I’m paraphrasing a man much wiser than I.

As the rule of law degrades like wet parchment left to the elements, we find ourselves guided by feelings, reduced to 140-character tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram pictures, and Youtube videos. Those tweets, posts, pics and videos are then distilled through the worldview sieve (which only allows liberal thought to pass through) into the mainstream media.

Today’s America is like the Israel of Judges chapter 21. “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

America was founded with the notion that a republic can operate through the will of the people, with no king, but with the bedrock conviction that there is a King in heaven from whom all good gifts proceed. Israel had no king, but it did have the Law. America has no king, and now we have cut off the Law, preferring a distracted democracy instead of a well-ordered republic.

Alexander Fraser Tytler (Lord Woodhouselee), Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at University of Edinburgh, wrote 224 years ago about the fall of Athenian democracy:

Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money.

Our “superior” classes are the political-media elite, while the rest of America enjoys its own form of plebeian ennui. Tytler continued:

The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch.

Tytler proposed that there’s a cycle in democracy, starting with bondage, and ending in dependence, leading back to bondage.

America is dangerously close to bondage.

We have abandoned faith and reason, consumed our abundance, and become gluttons in our selfishness. Then, resting on false ideals such as equality and the right to not be offended, we’ve moved into pure complacency and apathy. Large swaths of our culture and population have slid into dependency, and [belief that] the Left’s agenda would demographically engineer the country further into the pit of government control.

Now is not the time to pursue “electability” as a mantra. Foresight demands a pushback against the cycle. And the only pushback is one toward old-fashioned virtue.

Virtue: righteousness, morality, integrity, dignify, rectitude, honor, decency, respectability, nobility, worthiness, purity. Words that the Humanists sniff away with disdain.

A democratic government stripped of its essential virtue is “nothing better than an Utopian theory, a splendid chimera, descriptive of a state of society that never did, and never could exist; a republic not of men, but of angels,” wrote Tytler.

It is instructive for our nation to see the fruits of distractedness: [read this right here by David Thornton].

[They all face off] in all their millimeter-deep billboard smile glory while their standard-bearers occupy opposite ends of a quite broad spectrum of interests.

And apart from those who snipe and snark at the opposition, while supporting our own side, nobody else in America seems to care at all.

Electing candidates like [the ones we see winning primaries] is like plugging a sewer leak with Jell-O. It looks like dessert until you eat a spoonful, and it does nothing to stop the leak.

Above all, America needs a virtuous candidate. One who is not afraid to wade into the fight, with actual righteousness, belief in the rule of law (and the Lawgiver), and a firm knowledge of objective right and wrong. We cannot seek perfection, because humans aren’t perfect, but we can seek virtue.

We should examine candidates and support [the ones with virtue], and find the best leader to advance our cause, because much is at stake, and given our financial fragility, our time is very limited. [I wrote: By 2020, we may not have any options if we choose unwisely.] [Let’s admit it: 2020 is long gone, and now 2028 is staring into the abyss.]

All this talk of third parties and which issues are most important in the presidential race are simply more distractions.

Yes, we want a president who restores sanity to the budget. We want a candidate with a reasonable and lawful approach to our sovereign borders and citizenship (immigration policy). Yes, we want a president who will keep our country safe from enemies, while not making enemies of its own citizens. And we want a president who values the sanctity of life and the freedom of belief and faith.

But we need a candidate who has virtue. Finding one, we should all—as in every liberty minded person in America—get behind this candidate. It’s going to take that kind of push to overcome apathy and the Humanist drumbeat of the media. [And the draw of conspiracies and cultish devotion.]

When Frodo Baggins agreed to take Sauron’s Ring into the heart of the enemy’s territory, he knew it would be perilous. But without one walking with him, pledging his support, the quest was doomed.

“It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam,” said Frodo, “and I could not have borne that.”

“Not as certain as being left behind,” said Sam.

“But I am going to Mordor.”

“I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I’m coming with you.”

Let’s support the candidate we want, but when the GOP selects one to march into Mordor, we need to go too—all of us.

[I fear we have marched into Mordor, and found those we thought allies waiting there to receive us into darkness.]

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