What the Founders meant by ‘virtue,’ and how it could save our politics now

It’s tempting to think that might well have been the case.

What might have happened if former President Donald Trump had, like all of his predecessors, accepted the legitimacy of his clear defeat to President Joe Biden in November 2020?

We might have been spared the sacking of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. And it might have partially helped to heal, instead of further exacerbating, the bunker mentality that’s now part and parcel of our politics.

Is it too late for a course reversal? I don’t know.

At the end of his book, Ricks encouragingly observes that the country has made amazing progress since Adams, James Madison, George Washington, and the rest of the Revolutionary Generation walked among us. But, he also allows that there are places where we are backsliding, and that skid must be arrested.

That’s particularly true of the pernicious influence of money in our politics, Ricks observes, adding that the Founders “did not design the United States to be an oligarchy owned by a rich few. Most would have deemed such an outcome inconsistent with being a republic.” It’s an observation with a particular resonance given the news of billionaire Elon Musk’s looming takeover of Twitter, and the outsized political bullhorn it gives him.

Ricks calls for — and I’ll second — a refocusing on the public good, and the notion promoted by Roman politician and philosopher Cicero that the “welfare of the public is the supreme law.”

Ricks asserts, and I further agree, that access to a quality public education, affordable healthcare, and quality transportation and infrastructure, are all public goods. Sandwiched in there is a call for respect for institutions, though I’ll also note that such respect is a two-way street.

Ricks also asserts that “Americans need to put less emphasis on the property rights of the individual and more on the rights of the people as a whole.” That means wearing a mask when you need to wear one, or getting a vaccine so the people around you don’t get sick. It also means not putting profits ahead of people.

I’m not suggesting that it will be easy. The classicism embraced by the Founders largely was driven out by the factionalism, that is, partisanship, that gripped the country as the 18th Century gave way to the 19th Century. And Washington would no doubt be horrified by the polarization of our current era.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth trying. America always has flourished when we’ve put the greater good first.

And while virtue, as the Revolutionary Generation conceived of it, might be uncool right now, it might also be what ends up saving us.

An award-winning political journalist, John L. Micek is Editor-in-Chief of The Pennsylvania Capital-Star in Harrisburg, Pa. Email him at jmicek@penncapital-star.com and follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek.