Values vs. Virtues

At the recent Munich Security Conference, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, in responding to remarks from U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, said “This is not acceptable.” He then went further; “Democracy,” he said “does not mean that anyone can say anything.” Cut to the U.S. news program “60 Minutes” where Sharyn Alfonsi is asking several German prosecutors about freedom of speech. “Is posting an insult a crime?” Alfonsi asks. “Yes,” the German prosecutors respond. And so it goes. (It’s worth noting that a day before the “security” conference stated, a 24-year-old Afghan Islamist rammed his car into a crowd of innocent Germans, injuring 37 and killing two, including a two-year-old girl and her mother)

Also at the Munich Security Conference, Christoph Heusgen, a German diplomat and the chairman of the conference, said (and again, after the speech of Vice President Vance), “After the speech of Vice President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common values base, is not that common anymore.”

And one more, before I get to my point: Afrim Gashi, the president of the Macedonian assembly, wrote to Orthodox Believers on Christmas stating “Dear Orthodox believers, On behalf of the Assembly of North Macedonia, I extend warm Christmas wishes. May this day highlight the values of tolerance, solidarity, and respect that unite us as a society. Wishing peace, harmony, and joy to you and your families. Happy holidays!” (I’ll set aside the fact, for now, that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ and not about “tolerance, solidarity and respect” which Gashi knows perfectly well but chose not to acknowledge.)

I’m done with talk about “values.”

It’s time to talk about virtues.

Speaking of which, when was the last time you heard a politician, bureaucrat, or diplomat speak about virtues? Yeah, me neither.

Whatever happened to discussions about the virtues, such as honesty, courage, self-sacrifice, and wisdom to name but four? I’ll keep this in the realm of our world today and the geopolitical scene, though you can also apply this to everyday living, your family, your business, your neighborhood, and more.

Honesty

Talking and writing honestly about the truth of what we are facing as Western democracies – if we do not allow freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of worship, among others; if, instead, we attempt to stifle those necessary freedoms and crack down on those who engage in them (such as the German example above or the British example of arresting a man for silently praying near an abortion clinic), then all the talk about “values” of democracy, the “rule of law,” and so forth have very little meaning. (A corollary to this issue of cracking down on free speech is this: just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean you should say something. Those who engage in insults for the mere “fun” of it or who do it with deliberate intention to hurt someone are telling us about their own personal lack of character, their lack of judgement, their lack of virtue.)

Courage

We need more men and women to speak, write, and communicate with courage and conviction about both the threats to our Western democracies: From without – whether that is Islamists around the world and in our own countries; Russia in a plethora of ways; illegal immigrants who break the law simply by crossing our borders; China and their theft of IP, their export of fentanyl and other dangerous drugs, their bullying of Taiwan and other neighbors, their Belt and Road Initiative and much more; Iran and their mullahs; the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and their lunatic leader; Yemen and their crazies; and many more. From within – woke ideology; so-called “diversity, inclusion, and equity” (DIE); attempts to tear down our own individual and unique histories as nation-states and replace it with something fabricated and false; and more. Courage would have been very useful over the past decade if people, especially Europeans, had spoken out against Greta Thunberg (to take one example) and rejected her literally childish pouts and demands and instead invested in more nuclear power plants (Germany shut down their last three nuclear power plants in 2023).

Self-sacrifice

This is one that hits home that many no longer want to talk about and let me begin by picking on Germany again. Germany, the former economic powerhouse of Europe, is in a dismal state of affairs these days, economically, on issues of energy, on issues of individual freedoms, and more. Why? Because Germans became soft and fat and got used to the good life, of years in which American taxpayers paid for their security, and the security of Europe as Europe built a welfare state and gave everyone six weeks of vacation and cradle to grave state support. All of us, individually, can observe how the West, collectively, has ignored the virtue of self-sacrifice and has gorged on the good times of the past three plus decades, setting aside doing what is right and needed and instead doing what feels good.

Wisdom

Finally, wisdom. Our societies – maybe us, individually – have prioritized information over knowledge, and knowledge, over wisdom. When was the last time you heard a politician talk about the need for wisdom? Yes, maybe the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, but shouldn’t we be prioritizing wisdom over random facts and information, important as they are? Wisdom is the ability to take that information and knowledge, and then properly apply it not only to our daily lives, but to the lives of our peoples and countries. Do we do that anymore or are we too busy chasing facts and information, responding to the “hot takes” of the information moment instead of taking time to understand what it means and what to do about it?

John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of my country, the United States of America, and our second president, wrote often about virtue and its necessity in the life of a nation. “Public virtue,” he wrote, “cannot exist in a nation without private [virtue], and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” Along similar lines, he wrote “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence, then the body can live and move without a soul.”

If we, the collective West and democracies of the world wish to not only survive, but to succeed, then we best start extoling the virtues of honesty, courage, self-sacrifice, and wisdom.