Chapter Eleven (Draft)

If we wish to live in safety we will seek to create safety in our communities, actively engaging with our neighbors to form trustworthy relationships. Having dependable neighbors will matter when the going gets tough. But this does not often happen easily. Collaboration among neighbors is not encouraged today’s world where social isolation and partisan politics lead to paralysis.

In this chapter we will examine the significance of ethical principles and constructive values if we are to address this challenge effectively. How can we overcome the obstacles that hinder authentic engagement? How can we live with a moral integrity that generates respect and supports creative dialogue?

The thoughtful reader will recognize the role of ethics in ensuring safety and fairness in a civil order we depend on and in a life well-lived. However, the issues we encounter when living and working with others are complex and personal. We should not expect to engage in community life without being prepared for them.

Political philosophy can be a meaningful and valid concern, but it is the ethical consensus— embodied in human behavior, in social conduct, and in law—which secures order and forms the character of society. This implies a question that is particularly significant today: How can we live with the moral integrity that civilized order requires, and which provides the foundation for genuinely functional communities?

Ethical sloppiness has been a growing influence in America. This is addictive and degrading. It undercuts economic stability, social order, and mental health. Functional community depends on trust and on the conditions that enable the quality of trust: truthfulness, moral responsibility, and active interpersonal dialogue. These are not things that come by way of wishful thinking. They depend on committed intent and are best learned and lived in constructive action and in ongoing relationships. Real community is not possible otherwise.

This may seem idealistic to some and to others simply out of reach. I believe one of the reasons we find this challenging, other than the demands of integrity itself, is the problematic attitude many of us have toward virtues and values. In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams wrote:

“The word ‘virtue’ has for the most part acquired comic or otherwise undesirable associations, and few now use it except philosophers, but there is no other word that serves as well, and it has to be used in moral philosophy. One might hope that, with its proper meaning reestablished, it will come back into respectable use. In that proper use, meaning an ethically admirable disposition of character, it covers a broad class of characteristics, and, as so often in these subjects, the boundary of that class is not sharp and does not need to be made sharp.” [i]

One has to wonder if there is any concern about virtue at all in today’s world. However, if we consider the origins of the deception and distrust in our present circumstances, regeneration of respect for moral values would, I suggest, be the only responsible answer.

It might reasonably be argued that this is a global problem and not limited to the United States. As Americans, however, we have particular reason to take notice. Please bear with me. Many of you share my view that the future of this American Republic depends, first and foremost, on the bulwark of stability that is the United States Constitution. The Constitution provides a uniquely unrestrictive governing structure. It depends quite literally on the expectations the Founders had of the integrity and character of future Americans. Their contract with us was an act of faith, an expression of the belief that Americans could be entrusted with the future.

This is not a theoretical interpretation of their motives. Charles Murray, in his book Coming Apart, comments: “In their various ways the founders recognized that if a society is to remain free, self-government refers first of all to individual citizens governing their own behavior.… Everyone involved in the creation of the United States knew that its success depended on virtue in its citizenry—not gentility, but virtue.” [ii]

Murray then reminds us of the words of James Madison, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. The expectation was expressed explicitly.

James Madison: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical [wildly fanciful] idea.”

Patrick Henry was equally forceful: “No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue.”

And, George Washington, (in his farewell address) said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

Such warnings confront us today as we peer into the waiting abyss. Will we stop to consider why liberty depends on virtue, and, indeed, what liberty actually meant to the people who set the United States on its path?

During the intense debates that accompanied the ratification process for the Constitution, the question of virtue raised as many questions as it does today. A virtue based on spartan asceticism, or what today might be called “simple living”, some argued, was neither necessary or appropriate in democratic America, where freedom and economic progress are guided by self-interest and ambition. Was this what was intended?

The question before us then is this: What do we understand to be the need for practical virtues that are effective in a republic where justice, prosperity, and freedom are all fundamental to purpose? My answer is that accountability is essential, and this falls to ourselves as citizens. It is here that our discussion of first principles begins.

Why do we need virtues? Certain virtues are essential in protecting us from violating the stability of true order (see Chapter 9). They allow us to live in a state of being that is congruent with order. Furthermore, virtues reflect maturity of character and full engagement with a reality which is not imagined, but given.

Please let that sink in. Just as reality is necessarily coherent and unified, so also are the virtues mutually dependent and inseparable. They are not simply ideas or qualities we can choose to embrace or neglect. They are the substance of our high destiny as responsible, self-possessed human beings.

We are all capable of understanding this truth, and so it is that we are each capable of entering into accountable relationships with neighbors and co-workers. Accountability usually means responsibility for actions and outcomes. This can be practiced in any relationship, but it is only in the context of community that accountability can be fully tested. It is here that the integrity of trustworthy relationships cannot be escaped. Truthfulness and dependability are experienced in the sustained interpersonal engagement that make authentic community what it is.

Accountability is also important in the workplace, but there we often have room to stretch the truth or to seek personal advantage. In community there is far less “wiggle-room” than in most organizations or places of employment. And here there is no escape from the integrity expected of interactive relationships.

Honest relationships can be hard work, but when the going gets tough, relationships count. We are not simply concerned about making acquaintances here. This is not about borrowing a cup of sugar over the back fence or talking about the weather. If we find ourselves under threat, directly or indirectly, the last thing we need are neighbors who are an unknown quantity. To make our communities safe and to rebuild the nation, we need dependability. And that means friendship and trust.

Building trust is not something that Americans know much about anymore. Many of us do not live or work in circumstances where it is a pressing concern, but social stability, justice, and effective governance all ultimately depend on trust. Without trust, liberty and justice will remain elusive and the fabric of this nation will continue to unravel.

It is not hard to see that virtue, as identified by the American Founders, is a necessary prerequisite to trust in our families, communities, and workplaces. Trust without truthfulness and dependability is inconceivable. Without these essential virtues, values are meaningless.

Freedom’s Virtue

While the virtues emphasized by the American Founders are easily recognized as essential in a free society, there is one value in which all are joined and knit together, namely the value of responsibility. The close relationship between freedom and responsibility has often been noted, but is rarely discussed among Americans today. Responsibility can be understood in two ways. In law and in the social sciences, responsibility is usually considered a matter of perceived credit or blame to be placed on persons or institutions for something that has taken place. However, the responsibility required by freedom involves the future rather than the past.

In our families, communities, and society as a whole, we have responsibility for taking action—for doing something. One dictionary defines this responsibility as moral or mental accountability, reliability, trustworthiness. If it is, indeed, a “moral duty”, this is because the safety and dependability of our circumstances require it. This responsibility determines the life we wish to live and the kind of society we wish to live in.

Responsibility becomes a virtue when it takes form in constructive action. To be realized in action, responsibility requires knowledge, awareness, and a readiness to respond. It might be helpful, then, to understand responsibility as a compound word: ‘response-ability’.

Most of us understand what responsibility means in our personal lives, whether or not we accept it. And, most Americans know that freedom cannot exist without responsibility. But what does this mean for us—ultimately? Clearly, nothing will change while we wait for others to accept responsibility for doing something. Responsibility is personal and self-defining. A “readiness to respond” is the commitment and ability to take initiative. And so, we could call responsibility “freedom’s virtue.”

However, taking responsibility for freedom is not as simple as it might seem. There are two primary reasons for this. First, our ability to accurately recognize the full reality of our circumstances will always be limited by our perceptions, as well as our knowledge of context—both past and present. Have we, for example, accepted personal responsibility for investigating truth independently, and assessing how things came to be as they are? Are other people influencing our perceptions? Do we trust their truthfulness and motives? How might our actions impact the needs or interests of other people—which is to say, innocent bystanders?

In Chapter 9 we considered the discipline required to navigate the subtle boundaries of freedom and responsibility. This is not easy. The ethical questions and complexities we face when engaging with today’s world cannot be exaggerated. For this reason, living in a dependable community, where constructive dialogue is supportive and respectful, is valuable. It is by means of honest and varied inputs from community members that we can achieve good judgment and a well-rounded perspective

Responsibility for freedom is far more than a theory and ultimate goal. We are responsible for managing the means for creating it. The means employed, the character of constructive action, and the qualities of attitude and spirit will determine the results. In Chapter 17, I will focus on responsibility and its conditions in detail.

The Foundations of Community

If we seek a free society and a civilized future, it is in our interests to create an environment where dialogue and trust are encouraged and brought to life. Values are invariably plural, and we need to accept this. Courage is needed to negotiate acceptable working relationships. It will be necessary for local communities to work out an agreeable system of ethical principles and behavioral expectations that support a safe, positive environment. Yes, we are talking about consensual rules here. This environment cannot be created overnight, but it must be initiated purposefully and with full participation. And it must then be sustained as an evolving system acceptable to everyone.

Communities need to “own” these agreements; they cannot be imposed from outside or adapted from a book. We do not need necessarily to share identical values to honor and respect the comfort of our neighbors. If we wish to create a safe, well-organized community, we will respect the reality of human feelings. Negotiating this will be neither quick or simple. But it can be advanced in small steps when we are committed to building trust and laying a foundation in justice.
Where do we start? We have to be realistic. Only a rational prudence can guide us.

Agreement on a commonly accepted catalogue of virtues in a world where generally accepted rules of behavior have ceased to exist, will not be possible. Cultural integrity has degraded to the point where traditions have fragmented or collapsed, but things have not always been this way. The philosophical heritage of the Western tradition in which the United States was founded, is influenced by two intertwined forces: the Greek philosophy of antiquity, especially that of Aristotle, and by the Christian tradition grounded in the theology of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. This heritage came unglued during the intellectual ferment of the European Enlightenment and what followed.

In stark contrast to Greek philosophy, Alasdair MacIntyre has observed, our lives are dominated today by an egoist attitude that is unwilling to compromise. He writes: “For what [an Aristotelian] education in the virtues teaches me is that my good as a man is one and the same as the good for those others with whom I am bound up in human community. There is no way of my pursuing my good which is necessarily antagonistic to you pursuing yours because the good is neither mine peculiarly nor yours peculiarly—goods are not private property. Hence Aristotle’s definition of friendship, the fundamental form of human relationship, is in terms of shared goods. The egoist is thus, in the ancient and medieval world, always someone who has made a fundamental mistake about where his own good lies and someone who has thus and to that extent excluded himself from human relationships.” [v]

Unfortunately, we have strayed far from this ideal. By the 18th century, Enlightenment thinking assumed that each individual by nature seeks satisfaction of his or her own desires alone. Consequently, we have inherited a society overwhelmed by fragmentation. When egoistic motivations dominate in society, MacIntyre comments, “there are at least strong reasons for supposing that a mutually destructive anarchy will ensue, unless desires are limited by a more intelligent version of egoism.” [vi]

What is to be done? A constructive attitude understands the need to be realistic about ones’ current reality and constraints, even while maintaining some form of moral rectitude.

I would propose that we can best pursue our own interests with an orientation focused on felt needs, including, for example, such things as neighborhood safety, food security, and mutual assistance. The possibility of approaching and potentially extreme crises, events that may threaten basic security, suggest the need to realign our personal priorities. Such considerations will create opportunities for re-examining personal assumptions about other people and clarify the value of practical cooperation. This will, in turn, encourage the shedding of habitual perceptions in favor of a truth we can only experience through new working relationships.

While the expectations of the American Founders send us a principled warning, the reality we face in America today is vastly more complex and fraught with anxiety than earlier generations could have imagined. However, the challenges that confront us invite mature thinking and a responsible attitude. Morality and order are not the products of abstract rules. They must be appropriate, practical, and fully understood. Likewise, values cannot be exemplified by society as a whole, except to the extent communities and institutions reflect the implicit standards of moral integrity embodied in the expectations of citizens. Values live and mature in the human heart. Moral integrity depends on personal judgment, commitment, and responsibility.

How does this happen in a civilized society? The answer is not mysterious. Active working relationships create mutual bonds and encourage commitment to principles that support both individual and community interests. Fellowship among fully engaged people leads to the understanding and communication that are needed to promote comfort and maintain order.

A coherent social order is found where there is a commitment to ethical precepts in which action is its own reward. When we are living in authentic community, endeavoring to ensure safety and to meet local needs in a dangerous world, this will matter. It will be necessary to manage our differences with patient equanimity.

While avoiding insistence on too rigid a list of strict moral values, we are challenged to facilitate comfortable working relationships and to avoid interpersonal offense. Mutual acceptance will need to mature gradually. This means respecting the values and moral sensibilities of our neighbors, which might not coincide entirely with our own. This requires open and honest communication—and generosity of spirit.

Navigating Value Pluralism

Adjusting to the realities of the human condition does not require that we compromise our personal values. We are who we are. Still, genuine community calls for a compassionate attitude and an inquisitive interest in one another. The disappointments, hardships, and pain experienced by our neighbors have, like our own, influenced their beliefs and perspective. We will have differences in experience and perspective, but pain is pain and we all have this in common. Do we have the courage and grace to support freedom for those who differ from us? We are not confronted with an impossible challenge. Let’s try to understand the reality of justice in a plural society.

While there will never be agreement about values in any society, Isaiah Berlin describes the significance of shared values:

“The view that there exist objective moral or social values, eternal and universal, untouched by historical change, and accessible to the mind of any rational man if only he chooses to direct his gaze at them, is open to every sort of question. Yet the possibility of understanding men in one’s own or any other time, indeed of communication between human beings, depends upon the existence of some common values, and not on a common ‘factual’ world alone. The latter is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of social intercourse. Those who are out of touch with the external world are described as abnormal or, in extreme cases, insane. But so also—and this is the point—are those who wander too far from the common public world of values.” [vii]

Needless to say, finding common ground will be essential for any successful community. Values determine how people relate to each other. Values take form in ethical principles or assumptions that can sometimes be so ingrained in personality that we don’t think much about them.

We live in a world where value pluralism is an inevitable reality. We do not share one another’s values fully. Values support belief systems and our diverse ways of understanding the world. When our values differ, conflict can easily arise, even within families or close friendships. It is also quite possible for two of our own personal values to conflict with each other. These are among the ethical dilemmas that force us to think, grow and mature as individuals. And, this is another reason why open communication will always be valuable.

The distinction between knowledge and belief is often unclear. We have to work these things out for ourselves. What is important is that we seek consciously to develop those qualities of character we wish to assimilate and internalize. And this cannot happen in isolation. It is only with active interpersonal engagement that understanding can grow and self-discipline can be applied. We depend on feedback from our friends and the community around us. But as a free people we also need to see with our own eyes and not through the eyes of others. Our search for truth must be entirely independent and personal. And, surely, we can make every effort to be gentle with one another as we continue to learn and grow. These are among the ethical dilemmas that force us to think, grow, and mature as individuals.

Normally, values provide guidance, stability, and a lens through which we understand our place in the world. They are not free-floating, self-generating illusions. Values gain reality by being actively lived. And human beings live, grow, and create in relationships with other human beings. Surely, wisdom suggests we allow one another the freedom to live and work with values that differ from our own, and that we avoid inflicting our values on others. To seek common ground, we must first grant others acceptance as autonomous, self-governing individuals.

In a future where most of us are empowered and productive, we will have learned to accept and benefit from a natural diversity of values. Such differences might appear minor, but the contribution of diverse perspectives is essential in maximizing the effectiveness of problem-solving (see Chapter 3). However, most of us have not experienced situations in which the diversity of values is recognized or appreciated. The state of the world is such that we are now experiencing social and economic dislocation and anxiety in which personal values can be challenged and assumptions disrupted.

Our circumstances, our society, our ways of engaging with other people, have all been changing. For nearly two centuries our friends, our interests, and our way of thinking were determined to a significant extent by our ethnicity (race), by our financial means, or by the nature of our employment. We understood and felt most at home with those who looked like us and worked with us.

Society has been organized along the lines of what came to be known as “the division of labor,” which influenced social consciousness and perspective perhaps more than many Americans realize. This consciousness has been breaking down for quite some time, exacerbated by the domination of large corporations, the incoherence of mass media, and the rapidly growing number of citizens with a secondary or post-secondary education.

The fragmentation first felt by earlier generations is now clearly apparent in the alienation and defensiveness felt by groups that perceive themselves as mistreated, abandoned, or left behind. When massive numbers of jobs moved offshore from the United States and vanished overseas, the sudden destruction of the manufacturing economy dropped millions of stunned Americans unceremoniously from the middle class. Large numbers of Americans have subsequently found themselves dislocated or set apart by practical disparities, which has led to alienation, defensiveness, and suspicion.

Whatever the details of personal politics and perceptions, a substantial number of Americans are quite aware of the damage caused to their lives by a financial elite that has ignored and abandoned them. They are equally aware of the emptiness of low-paying and meaningless jobs bequeathed to them by economic myopia. It is a crisis that promises to spread and deepen with the ascendancy of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence in the coming decades. Some practical solutions are available, involving training and capacity development, but this has received little attention in the public sphere at the time of this writing.

Another factor that should not be ignored is the social isolation that came with the advent of television. This did not begin with a pandemic in 2020. Several generations of Americans have been spending long hours in front of the television every day. Social media added an interactive element, but also the opportunity for manipulation, falsehood, and dishonesty. As a dominant way of life, mass media is mentally, culturally, and morally deadening. And, we are doing this to ourselves.

How will we free ourselves of these addictions? How will we remake and rebuild productive lives, economically and otherwise, where there are deeply felt grievances and severely limited horizons? We are unique individuals with differing views, personalities, experience, and wishes—but we can work together, building supportive relationships in which we engage in projects, businesses, or other creative endeavors. As we recognize our differences with others, we can choose to engage in a learning process with curiosity, sensitivity, and, most of all, courage.

The Foundation of Truthfulness

All virtues are prudent because they indicate caring about both present and future good. But human beings have never agreed on a common catalogue of values. The underpinnings of social integrity have differed among cultures, faith traditions, and periods of history. So, the question of what we need today is significant. If we are to construct a stable, prosperous, and generally acceptable future—what values do we need to agree on?

First and foremost, I believe it self-evident that everything depends on truthfulness. This is the foundation of all values and virtues. Without truthfulness there can be no assurance, no dependability, and no trust.

I suggest that we also accept the virtues identified by the Founders. And I propose that the following values be accepted as non-negotiable: truthfulness, trustworthiness, dependability, fairness, patience, tolerance, public decency, and respect for personal dignity, privacy, and the integrity of marital unions.

None of us will ever be perfect, and yet all these values depend on relative consistency. Unfortunately, consistency can sometimes be influenced by circumstances that are beyond our control. This is one of the reasons why flexibility, forgiveness, and dialogue are important in relationships.

What is the bottom line? Virtues reflect the structure and integrity of justice. Justice, as defined in Chapter 9, is the ground in which virtues are embedded. It is for this reason that prudence is the underlying purpose of every virtue, and truthfulness is the most important.

A recognition that citizen responsibility and a just ethical order are the primary requirements of a free and civilized future, will determine whether there is hope for the future. This learning will mature gradually, but it is the first order of business. There is no alternative.

Every injustice and every failure of responsibility will corrupt good order. In other words, corruption involves far more than simple misbehavior. Indeed, anything that corrupts the integrity of the whole will harm our efforts and success. As responsible adults, whatever our values and opinions, we will avoid contributing to disunity and disorder.

All forms of corruption lead to disintegration and decay—in nature, in societies, and in the human soul. This truth has been recognized and taught by wisdom traditions for thousands of years. If we rise above the corrupting influences of our materialistic, self-centered culture, we can also recognize it naturally and intuitively.

We sometimes encounter resistance within ourselves as we endeavor to understand and apply specific virtues in practical life. This can be expected. It implies no fault on our part, but each is responsible for moving beyond our discomfort, because integrity matters.

Americans are taking on a monumental task, one which we cannot afford to delay. Compassion and integrity are as important today as they will be in the future. This is fundamental to the well-being of our families, our communities, and the nation.

This book leaves politicized issues off the table because Americans will, with authentic dialogue and a commitment to trustworthiness, resolve practical problems with reason, compassion, and fairness. Throughout human history community has been the foundation of civil order, an institution that survives crises and transcends politics. It has been the basis of security and well-being throughout centuries of crises and cataclysms. Whatever the causes of disruption, we can always turn to community by learning the needed skills and determining to make them work. If we need to begin again, let it be at home—and from a position of strength built with unity and self-sufficiency.

Making America strong will not be possible amid negativity, antagonism, and disunity. Nor will we find our way with compromised virtues. Once we accept the idea that community will be the foundation of a civilized future and that it provides the basis for civil order, safety, and moral integrity, we will gradually come to understand the principles, responsibilities, and patience this requires.

“Knowing that we have responsibility for the consequences of our actions,” writes Charles Murray, “is a major part of what makes life worth living.” [viii]

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[i]     Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Harvard Univ. Press (1985), p. 9.

[ii]    Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Crown Forum, Random House (2012), pp. 132-133.

[iii]   See Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, Random House (1960), Cluny Media edition (2020), pp. 193-194.

[iv]   Macmillan Dictionary Online, Macmillan Education Limited (2009–2021).

[v]    Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (3^rd edition), Univ. of Notre Dame Press (1981, 2007), p. 229.

[vi]    Ibid.

[vii]   Isaiah Berlin, Liberty: Four Essays (Introduction), Oxford Univ. Press (1969), p. 24.

[viii]   Charles Murray, op. cit., p. 285.