— THE NEW YORK TIMES "I want the country to be morally better, more stable".
We all yearn for a stable and morally intact society, but I have less faith in the narrow strictures of a closed society (whether it is Smalltown, U.S.A., or Smalltown, Somalia) than I do in the rich, though more unsettling, possibilities presented by a democratic and diverse society that upholds these values.
It aspires, in short, to be both stable and morally and politically neutral.
Virtues are morally positive character traits—stable dispositions to think, feel and act in certain ways under certain circumstances.
It undermines and destabilizes the moral fabric of a decent and stable society, by encouraging sexual promiscuity, deviant sexual practices and other attitudes and behaviour that threaten traditional family and religious institutions, and which conservatives regard as intrinsically morally wrong.
At the same time, it is morally unjustifiable that some kids are born in well-governed, stable, prosperous countries, while others are born in semi-functional states where they are prey to ethnic and religious violence or homicidal criminal gangs.
To have the virtues is to have a stable and ready willingness to make choices that are morally good because in line with the bonum rationis, the basic good of practical reasonableness.
But an appropriate action is not a morally perfect or virtuous action (katorthôma) unless it is done from understanding, the wise and stable condition possessed only by the fully virtuous person.
Thus a stable well-ordered society is one whose institutions are reproduced over time by informed, morally motivated citizens.
