Founding Fathers: Without Virtue There Is No Freedom

[rangerrebew]

Founding Fathers: Without Virtue There Is No Freedom
By Joshua Charles
January 19, 2019 Updated: January 29, 2019

The Founding Fathers believed one thing was absolutely essential to a free society: virtue. Sometimes the term they used was “self-government.”

What did it mean? Informed by thousands of years of philosophy and theology, first with Greeks like Aristotle, and later by Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the Founders understood “virtue” to be behavior (more specifically, habits) in accordance with the good—which both Aristotle and Aquinas, among others, defined as behaving according to “right reason.” Virtue was thus the willing sacrifice of one’s passions to a higher good, namely “right reason.”

Traditionally, the four “cardinal virtues” of antiquity were prudence, courage, temperance; and justice. The biblical book of Wisdom (8:7) listed the same virtues. Christian theology would go on to include the three “theological virtues,” namely faith, hope; and love (found originally in 1 Corinthians 13, written by Saint Paul). Hence, the famous “seven deadly sins” were the opposite of these virtues: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.

Benjamin Franklin, in his “Autobiography,” listed a similar set of virtues:

https://m.theepochtimes.com/founding-fathers-without-virtue-there-is-no-freedom_2761389.html

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

That's nice, but at This point I'd be Ecstatic if we could just have the freaking Rule of Law.

[DCPatriot]

That's nice, but at This point I'd be Ecstatic if we could just have the freaking Rule of Law.

"Rule of Law"?   Ecstasy?

Wake me up when Hillary Clinton & Friends are hanging by the neck.