The assault on virtue
What were once vices are now habits
I’ve been venting my spleen over the Claudine Gay/Harvard/antisemitism/plagiarism fiasco for the past few columns. Her ludicrous rise and inevitable fall at Harvard made my head almost literally explode. Gay is currently exhibit "A" in what I perceive to be an ongoing attack on merit by the extreme left. This bothers me to no end.
From where I sit, virtue, as a whole, is under assault these days. I do not, mind you, consider this attack on virtue to be the sole provenance of the left. There is, as far as I’m concerned, plenty of blame to go around. The way things are these days, a lot of people evidently don’t even know what virtue is. Or if they do, they don’t give a hoot about it.
Virtue is, of course, any trait that reflects high moral values: honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, integrity, fairness, prudence, modesty, kindness, reliability, perseverance, industriousness, excellence, and self-control, to name a few. These used to be considered good and necessary traits. These days, not so much.
Howlin’ readers will recognize this as another in a series of laments and rants (review here, here, and here) over what I see as a race to the bottom when it comes to how we cooperate with each other and conduct ourselves as a society. I predict that no good will come of it either. You simply cannot write enough laws to govern every human interaction, and if you could, they’d be impossible to enforce, especially given the fact that we can’t enforce many of the smaller number of laws currently written.
At some point, people who aspire to live peacefully together in communities have to learn to conduct themselves responsibly. Self-regulation is an essential element in any stable, well-functioning democracy.
When self-regulation begins to falter on a large scale, watch out; the fascists on both the left and the right will be happy to fix everything simply by taking away your rights. That’s the precipice over which we are looking right now.
Let’s examine a list of virtues, starting with honesty. The lack of honesty drives me nuts. Honesty is a simple, universally lauded value that is essential in human interactions in a free society. Yet it is as if you are a sucker these days if you aspire to be scrupulously honest. When I was a kid back in the 60’s, a handshake deal was considered good in most circumstances. Your word was supposed to mean something. And if it did not, that inconvenient-for-you fact got around. You didn’t want to mess up.
Not any more. These days, despite contracts that read like the Magna Carta, we rely on armies of attorneys and mediators to settle inane disputes. If a commitment is not spelled out in a lengthy contract, backed by a small army of litigators, it’s not considered good. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get used to this.
Courage is another virtue that is universally praised but seldom demonstrated. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the modern academy. Universities are populated by people whose job is precisely to stand up for excellence in scholarship, research, and service Despite the fact that most of these folks enjoy the benefit of some form of tenure to help them, they repeatedly fail to counter assaults on free speech, the free exchange of ideas, excellence, and merit.
Colleague under duress for not kowtowing to DEI madness? Throw them under the bus. Observe obvious research fraud? Look the other way. Exams too difficult, too stressful, too laborious to administer, inequitable, and not empathetic? Don’t stand up for pedagogy; just bin them.
Don’t even get me going on integrity, which is so rare these days that I’m flat-out amazed when I encounter it. The road to integrity is perhaps one of the loneliest, simply because it is so seldom trod. That, my friends, is a gen-you-wine wrinkle in the human condition.
Compassion, generosity, fairness, and kindness generally come in a package known as “cool.” You show me someone who embodies cool in today’s world, and I’ll show you a candidate for sainthood because the “cool” virtues involve placing the needs of others above one’s own. That turns out to be a rare trait across the political and social spectrum.
If you lived in a one-person universe, there’d be no such thing as cool. We live in a world of billions of people where opportunities abound, yet despite this, cool is an exceptionally rare commodity. The cool people are all keepers.
Tell me who, in today’s political, media, or pop culture enclaves, embodies prudence, modesty, or self-control. I’ll wait, but I won’t hold my breath. The examples, vis-à-vis these values, set by most media, sports, and cultural figures are enough to make me want to drive a railroad spike through my kneecap. My kids might not get to watch TV until they are 20.
Reliability? A lot of that went down like a lead balloon on Jupiter during the pandemic. The contractor says they’ll be there by 11 a.m. You’d better hope they don’t mean next year. Need call-center help? You might as well jump out of a window to solve your problem. Need the police or other authorities to address crime in many places? Good luck with that.
Perseverance and industriousness are dirty words to the DEI set because they are elements of a work ethic—something that embodies “whiteness” and confounds “equity.” The end result of this idiocy, to bring things around full circle, is the saga of Claudine Gay.
So why is virtue under assault? For the same reasons that cultural and professional standards have declined across the board: Lack of instant gratification, lack of work ethic, difficulty staying the course, and an increasing inability to deal with disappointment. The participation trophy, trigger warning, and safe-space crowds are generally not up to any of this, and that has become a problem. Rather than aspire to reach for the sky, we’ve come to pull the sky down to our level because it’s a lot quicker and much easier.
So virtue is taking some hits; what to do about it? I think that this is the one situation in which I believe that cultural cancellation is appropriate. If you lie, cheat, steal, or rip people off, like a prominent former POTUS (or two, or three), you should be eschewed, not lauded, for that.
Courage is tough, and not everyone is cut out to be pugnacious when it’s needed. That’s fine. I have no issue with the meek. But no guts, no glory. Respect comes after you develop some cojones. That’s my rule, anyway. I think it’s a good one.
If you are a rare person of integrity who happens upon this column, please know this. I respect you immensely, even if I don’t know you. You make the world a better place just by walking down the street. My greatest fortune in life is knowing an outsized number of people who embody integrity. They have provided me with a lifetime of examples to look up to.
Be cool, or go away. You simply should not put up with people who aren’t cool. I’m not talking about the people who think that they are cool because of their station in life either; I’m talking about the ones who embody compassion, generosity, fairness, and kindness. Getting these mixed up is a mistake.
Reliability is tough simply because reliable people are well-subscribed. It’s still worth seeking them out. Better yet, it’s worth becoming one yourself. You may begin immediately.
And finally, work ethic. This is another virtue that is remarkably rare yet within the reach of everyone. Just put your head down and get to freaking work. It’s a hard road, and you will occasionally be let down. You are going to work very hard at some things that won’t work out. Get over it. Perseverance is the key. Develop a good enough work ethic, and you should always feel good about betting on yourself.
That, my friends, is freedom. And freedom is really good.
Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com
When I was teaching Introduction to politics I had students reading excerpts of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Machiavelli (his “Discourses” as well as “the Prince”) and every one of them raised the issue of personal virtue. My former department has deleted this course from its offerings and “virtue” has disappeared from discussion in their curriculum. Discussion of victimhood now trumps virtue and forget about any mention of virility!
Many years ago, when I was a young corporal attending the Army's Primary Leader Development Course (which the Army keeps renaming, and thus devaluing), I was taught that Non-Commissioned Officers (sergeants) were respected leaders because they demonstrated through word and deed the Four C's : Courage, Candor, Competence, and Commitment. This was reinforced throughout every level of leadership school that I attended. And the sergeants who lived the Four C's were, without a doubt, among the finest humans it has been my privilege to know.
My point here is that you need a structure of values if you wish to have a trust society and if you wish to have a virtuous society. Tearing down values leads to an ugly society that will accomplish little. And we are, indeed, seeing this. We elect grifters, liars, and cheats to political office and we tolerate the same "virtues" in those leading our institutions. We accomplish little these days and praise that as good.