Virtue and Accountability – what’s all the fuss about?

When people speak of virtue they often think of religion and more and more people are believing that there should be no connection between government and religion. The fallacy of this argument is that virtue and religion are not necessarily the same thing.

Virtue is just another word for morality, and morality simply means doing what is right.  However, there are those in our society who say they don’t want anyone preaching to them about morality.

However, it is morally wrong to kill someone but it is morally right to care for someone. It is morally wrong to lie but it is morally right to be honest. It is morally wrong to steal but it is morally right to protect someone else’s possessions. But, if there are no standards of morality then there is no right or wrong. In that case it is just as right to kill as it is to care for someone, it is just as right to lie as it is to be honest, and it is just as right to steal as it is to protect property.

Not even the critics of morality disagree with this because without some standard of right and wrong, no society can exist for very long. You cannot have a prosperous country when people are not honest with one another and you can’t have a thriving economy when people are selfish, self-indulgent, or lazy. The question isn’t whether or not there should be morals but what those morals should be. What the critics of morality want are a low standard so they can be free to live an immoral lifestyle. But the fact is that the lower the standards of morality the greater number of problems society will have and the more laws will be needed to regulate their behavior.

On the other hand, the higher the standard of morality that a society has the greater will be the peace and harmony that exists among its people, the fewer laws they will need to have their lives regulated, thereby allowing them greater freedom to do as they please, and the more that society will prosper and grow.  

Virtue is the glue that holds society together because it’s what allows people to work together for their common good. The more virtue a society has, the stronger it will be. The less it has, the more problems it will experience.