Many–including Max Boot, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, and our own Matthew Cantirino–have remarked critically on the way that President Obama appealed to the manifest virtues of our military in his State of the Union Address.
Let me join the chorus.
What the President was reaching for in his invocation of the military was republican virtue—the virtues of citizens willing to subordinate themselves to the ends of the community, enduring hardship and privation, subjecting themselves to a rigorous self-discipline, and holding one another responsible and accountable. These are impressive virtues, reeking of Greece and Rome, and self-consciously invoked by the founding generation in the pseudonyms they chose when they published political pamphlets—Publius, Pacificus, Helvetius, Agrippa, Cato, Brutus, and so on.
I’ll leave aside whether this president’s—or any president’s—domestic agenda can inspire them. I have my doubts.
The point I’d like to focus on is that these are not soft, self-indulgent qualities. They have, as I’ve already noted, a hard core of self-discipline and personal responsibility, which can only be cultivated in settings that inflexibly demand these qualities of those who participate in them. You may not need the Spartan Agoge system or the Great Santini, but you do need, at the very least, old-fashioned fathers. You’re not going to get there with speeches, or with schools where everything is litigated, arbitrated,or mediated by helicopter parents and union shop stewards, overseen by various intrusive government bureaucracies.
Don’t get me wrong. I want the American military to be as good as the President says it is. And I would welcome more self-discipline and self-sacrifice from my fellow citizens. But to get there from here, the President shouldn’t be talking about the Navy SEALS, but about old-fashioned “family values.” The problem is that he has largely foreclosed that line with the ways in which he has given in to those who think family is all about self-actualization.
January 27th, 2012 | 3:55 pm
Please add Ben Shapiro to the chorus:
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/27/video-the-real-response-to-the-sotu-address
January 27th, 2012 | 4:15 pm
I think it’s ridiculous to claim Obama wants to militarize the United States. All the virtues he named specifically are just as virtuous for people outside the military as inside the military.
January 27th, 2012 | 4:33 pm
Wasn’t the President asking after the same civic spirit President Kennedy called to mind in his invocation “Ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country”? Recently a correspondent on NPR glibly commented that Kennedy couldn’t have made that speech today, and unfortunately she was right.
January 27th, 2012 | 4:52 pm
Well, we certainly don’t want to ask the richest group of people to do anything uncongenial to them, that’s for sure.
January 27th, 2012 | 5:51 pm
….Nor do we want to asked the virtuous “99%”, whose social security, medical care, and various mortgage deducations are sacrosanct, to do anything uncongenial. You can’t ask for sacrifice and discipline and then call for additional government programs at the same time. Well, you can, if you are pleased with the status quo and content with marching off a cliff. Whether our moral debt will do us in prior to our fiscal debt is a matter open for debate. Regardless of which comes first, these “bills” are fast coming due….
January 27th, 2012 | 9:13 pm
I have heard it said that Aristotle observed that whenever a country is united behind a single purpose, that purpose is war.
We don’t want to be military. We want, each of us, to pursue happiness. The virtues that are necessary to prevent societal collapse will preclude some forms of pursuit, but that’s a far thing from all being united behind one aim.
January 28th, 2012 | 2:03 am
I have heard it said that Aristotle observed that whenever a country is united behind a single purpose, that purpose is war.
That’s because “checks and balances” is part of a healthy society, domestically.
It is appropriate to unite only when the group is threatened.
Think of Maslow’s hierarchy: all the bickering associated with different perspectives arguing about ‘how to climb higher’ ceases, when there is a threat at a lower level. (And apologies if I’m mixing my metaphors again.)
January 28th, 2012 | 10:12 am
It’s just a campaign speech for the upcoming election.
Witness “Catholic” educators invited to the White House, while down the street HHS, is adding shackles to Freedom of Religion.
Notre Dame president Fr. Jenkins bought into the “Hope & Change” rhetoric, ignoring Obama’s abortion & infanticide support. How much will the new HHS rules cost ND? Seems there is a penalty for soul selling.
January 28th, 2012 | 2:51 pm
It is good that the President recognizes those who keep the oath they have sworn. Fidelity is indeed a virtue and, seemingly, no longer a common virtue.
January 29th, 2012 | 5:07 pm
Publius
Yes, but not entirely in the sense you mean.
We didn’t ask the 99% to approve a number of things: the shift away from pensions to 401(k)s; the shifting of jobs from the US to the Third World; the shift of the basic work compact that fidelity and loyalty will be rewarded with stability in employment to devil-take-hindmost; the shift in opportunity from the post-war model to the latter-day Gilded Age model where the greatest opportunity comes from chasing asset bubbles.
And, of course, when we asked people to vote tax decreases for themselves without commensurate changes in the government goods they paid for, of course they voted for it. Because politicians knew they would not approve such reductions, but were intent on getting credit for reducing taxes. Certainly not virtuous, of course. But that cycle of vice goes back to the late 1970s.
January 30th, 2012 | 8:44 am
One thing, I miss about the so-called “greatest” generation was you almost always knew from a candidate’s war record whether he was the real deal or a phoney. Bush I, McGovern and Bob Dole were the real deal. Reagan was a phoney.
The Vietnam generation was a little more complicated. McCain and Kerry were the real deal; Al Gore was an REMF. Bush II and Clinton were phonies.
It’s obvious the military-extolling community organizer is a phoney. But what about Palin, Santorum and Cuomo?
January 30th, 2012 | 9:21 am
[...] … do you think the President traces his family values to the military? More here. Kinda reminds me of the Habermas/Ratzinger [...]
January 30th, 2012 | 10:24 am
Tagged: http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/2012/01/virtue-ethics-now-also-for-bigots.html
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