Virtue vs. Vice: Self-Control & Gluttony

"It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue
in the people." - Richard Henry Lee, letter to Colonel Martin Pickett, March 5,
1786

Time for me to address the second in the series of virtues and vices. To recap, our Founders realized and understood that for a people to be truly free, they must be virtuous. And in the time of the founding of America, the people knew instinctively what is virtue and what is not on a much wider scale than we do today. They were taught virtue by their parents and in the pew at church. They also learned it in school.

Hard to say that it is being taught now outside the confines of a church, and even then some places are suspect.

Gluttony is traditionally considered the overindulgence of food and/or drink to excess, and withholding from the needy is also listed as gluttony. It's virtue, self-control, is also better described as moderation. Basically, it's taking in what you need and within a reasonable limit.

I can personally attest to gluttony. I'm a big guy - for now, anyway. I like food, it's how I got this way. And our society caters to that desire. Buffets, bigger and bigger menu items, more rich and decadent things available. And in the world of drink, just look at the mind-numbing selection of beer, wine, and liquors out there. If you enjoy these things, you can go forever without getting bored.

And so I did. And, not surprisingly, my body is paying the price. Aside from being overweight, I have Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. I pretty much stopped drinking, partly due to financial reasons, partly due to the horrible person I become when I overindulge.

So I have a choice to make: keep eating and drinking like I had been, or die young and miss out on my family. I chose option A, and am glad to say I've dropped under 300 for the first time in 5 years. It's a long road ahead of me, but I know from previous experience that eating right and losing some more weight will get me off the medicines and make me (as well as my sons) an awful lot happier.

But step back and see how our culture views these things - are we shown that self-control in any sense is a good thing? Not really. We're told we need the quintuple-stacker burger with bacon and cheese, or we need the huge tankard of ale with our 32 ounce steak. Throw in a 2-pound slab of cheesecake for dessert, boss - you deserve it! Now when we go out and I order a salad or something light, I get a look like I'm insane. If my kids want a kids' meal at one of the fast food joints, either I order something really light (at Wendy's, I admit - a chili and a side salad work well for me) or I just don't order anything. And I see the weird look from the cashier. "How's the fat guy not ordering a Baconator?" they wonder.

It spreads beyond food and drink. We have to have that faster car. We need to have a bigger engine. We need the bells and whistles. A car is not a car unless it has leather seats, a GPS, a home theater and a dashboard hibachi! Honestly, as long as the thing gets me from point A to point B I don't care if it's held together with duct tape or has wood paneling. (Another point of reference, my first ride HAD wood paneling. Driving a wood-panel station wagon in high school does wonders for the social life.)

We MUST have that giant flatscreen with picture-in-picture-in-picture. We NEED that NFL package to see all the games as they happen, not that it's possible to comprehend it all at once.

Our lack of self-control has driven us to the brink of financial and medical ruin. We've spent fortunes on dining out, on fancier equipment and cars, on things we really don't have any sane use for. Many of us have eaten and drunk ourselves to poor health. And a lot of people are probably banking on government-run health care to avoid having to directly pay the bills.

All because we as a people have forgotten how to say "No, thank you" and instead gorged at the trough.

How do you turn back from the abyss? It's easy to say, not always easy to do, as virtue often is. Say no to the things you want but do not need. People are learning this now with the banking nightmare. More and more people are saving instead of spending, and it's driving the banks and businesses insane. Business and banking grew because of the loose wallets of a LOT of people, and now that people are reining it in, they are suffering and in turn cranking up the heat trying to get people to spend.

Restaurants and bars suffer too. Turnout there is shrinking nationally. Places locally which used to have a wait time of hours now have little or no waits most nights. Instead of dining out, people are staying home or having friends over.

We're wising up, and it's a good thing.

- F. D. for Two Joe Schmoes

Watch the Continental Congress '09!

I'm interrupting my stream of thought yet again, because at present the Continental Congress '09 is meeting in St. Charles, IL.

You can view the live feed here: http://www.givemeliberty.org/CC2009/default.htm

Any lover of liberty and freedom, and any serious student of the Constitution as well, NEEDS to watch this. A lot of very interesting topics are being covered. Mainly, the focus is on the varied abuses of our Constitution perpetrated by Congress, the White House and the courts - and contrary to the Left's thoughts, this is NOT the equivalent of ObamaBash 2009. They are covering the abuses that have been going on for DECADES.

We the People gave our trust too readily to politicians and we all need to wake up to the very real dangers they pose to us now.

Please, watch along as it streams live, and pass it along to your friends. Make this go viral - it's the next wave of the Tea Parties.

- F. D. for Two Joe Schmoes

Virtue vs. Vice: Purity and Lust

"If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be
enslav'd. This will be their great Security." - Samuel Adams,
letter to James Warren, February 12, 1779

As promised, here is the first in a series on virtue versus vice. As mentioned below, for America to return to greatness, we need to once again be a virtuous people. But, what does that mean? I'm hoping to go through each of the Seven Deadly Sins and their corresponding virtues, and show you how far we've fallen from the virtue and given in to the vice.

The first virtue on my list is Purity, and the vice is Lust. Not because I value this over the others, but because on the list I took it from, it was listed first.

We'll begin with the virtue. Purity is also known as Chastity. It's essentially living a morally wholesome life, free from the temptations of the flesh and, well, carnal desires. Going further, expressing this virtue is more than just not surfing adult sites or PPV, or faithfulness to your spouse - although these are key parts of it. It can also be extended to respectfulness towards the opposite sex, to not treating them as mere objects there for your personal use/abuse for pleasure.

If you;re reading this blog, and agreeing with a lot of what we've been saying, then you probably know you don't have to look too hard to see how far we've strayed from Purity and Chastity and given in to Lust. Many of us are guilty to varying degrees. I won't say all, I am sure some have managed to avoid it - I'm not one of them. Sex is pervasive in American culture. You can't even go to teh supermarket without running into it. Waiting on line at the checkout, you can't help but see the scantily-clad women on the magazines. You see it on billboards, catalogs. You get it thrown at you on television constantly. I try to avoid watching much TV but most of the prime time shows have revealing outfits or innuendo.

Why? It sells - the people running the networks aren't concerned with your well-being, or that of the country. They're there to make money. I don't fault them for that; it's capitalism and if they can make money on it, it's their right. They should use more ethical weights, but since the demand isn't there, they simply give the consumers what they clamor for. And people clamor to be titillated and teased.

What happens then? Well, people tend to view others as objects more than people. To a guy, a beautiful woman in a bikini isn't a beautiful woman - she becomes an 'it' - something there to make a man feel like a man. And the smae holds true for women, although I think they have better control over their base emotions than we do.

But turning a person into an object makes them less human, and when you view a person as a thing then treating them as a thing becomes easy. IN the case of a person, you lead to harassment, rape, murder. Callous acts caused by callous people who no longer see people as living, breathing equals, but as something there to give them pleasure.

So, how do we stop this? I think it's simple enough to say - stop giving in to the stuff being put out there. Remove the demand for it. Turn away from the vice.

And yes. It's easy to say it. Doing it tends to prove a lot tougher. People are addicted to pornography, in many cases they want to turn away but find themselves sucked back in. It's no different from drug addiction or alcoholism. The rush is the motivating force. People want to feel good, and that's the easy way to feel good. Turning from vice to virtue is HARD. As a friend once commented, "if it were all good times, every jackass would do it." It takes inner strength to turn away from the vice. I'm no expert on HOW to do it successfully. I just know WHAT is involved. The HOW is up to the individual.

I will continue with the others as I get time. And hopefully soon.

- F.D. for Two Joe Schmoes

Darkest Before The Dawn

First, I spologize to you for not posting more often. The realities of raising two boys and looking for work and all the fun of being a stay-at-home dad take precedence over my ranting online in long form.

Second - those virtue vs. vice bits will come. Honest.

Anyway, I wanted to take this late night period of relative calm to share my thoughts on the recent events in this once and future great nation of ours. We are indeed in dark times - a lot of what we thought made America great is being brushed aside in the name of political expediency.

Instead of upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States, the members of the House decided to uphold and defend their lobbyists by passing a Titanic-sized bill under the ruse of health care reform in what is the most egregious and blatant power grab in recent memory, if not in the history of this nation. Yes, the vote was primarily along party lines, but let's not kid ourselves on this; both sides of that proverbial aisle have been slack in their responsibilities for quite some time for things to have come to this point.

Is our health care system perfect? No, of course not. We are imperfect beings, and try as we might, we're never going to nail it perfectly. But it is the best one currently in the world, and the problems we have with it are not the result of a lack of state involvement, but rather the intrusion of government regulation into the field. Premiums are as high as they are because the insurers' hands are tied when it comes to competing with one another. Many on the left will aruge that deregulation will make things worse, but in practice that is pretty much never the case. Giving the companies the ability to compete will result in price decreases. Look at the prescription prices now. Larger chains are offering many common prescription medications at very low prices, and in some cases, for free. I recently had a prescription for the antibiotic Levaquin filled gratis at my local supermarket. The free market works wonders, if only the chains of government regulation are undone.

But alas, the larger issue, and the cause of our dark times, is not a discussion over how to address our health care. The larger, more forboding problem is that the people in Washington who are supposed to not only represent the people, but to make sure their work is in accordance with the united States Constitution are in essence ignoring the law of the land, and ignoring us, in some cases openly mocking us.

The past few months have seen the rise of the Tea Parties and other grassroots movements of the people. We're sick of being treated like ignorant children by our elected officials. We're sick of our tax dollars being spent like there's no tomorrow, with little or no accountability for wasteful spending. We're tired of a media that treats us as insane, or as extremists or even terrorists. All we are asking is that those we elected to serve the best interests of America do so, and that they respond to us and not the groups who line their campaign war chests.

While a small number in DC get the message, most it seems have not, or will not. The rally in Washington in the days before the vote on PelosiCare was seen by a lot of us as a last stand against a Congress going mad with power, and our pleas fell on deaf ears. It does not help that the rally, called for by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, from what accounts I have read from personal friends, turned into little more than a GOP rah-rah session after a short while.

It would seem that neither side gets it. We're not looking to side with either the Democrats or the Republicans. We're looking to side with those who stand for individual liberty, limited government, and the Constitution. Sure, the GOP is against the bill, primarily because it's being pushed by the Democrats. I honestly believe had McCain won, something similar but less brazen would have been introduced and passed by now with Republican support. After all, in the somehow life-or-death economic crisis last summer, the "stimulus" passed with support from both parties.

It seems that no one in power is willing to listen to us. They think that we'll eventually go back to the TV and find something good on and forget about what they are doing to us. It's not going to happen. More and more of us are losing jobs, and it's not like new ones are being created (or saved, for that matter). Aside from an abundance of free time, we're now seeing what fruits we reap from sowing irresponsible spending and unnecessary intrusion by the government. No one wants to hire because the tax burden is going to skyrocket. it has to by virtue of the obscene amount of debt we are racking up. Added regulations make it that much harder for businesses to work efficiently. The ridiculous amount of money we're printing is driving the value of our currency into the ground. There's simply no economic reason for people to hire. All the jobs are heading offshore, unless of course you work for the government.

Our voices at this moment are unheard whispers among the roaring winds of "fundamental transformation" of America from a free land into a socialist state.

But despite this wrist-slittingly depressing analysis, I take some refuge in the notion that in our hour of greatest need arise those figures who can aid us in finding our bearings and setting us back on course.

We faced something similar with Carter. Reagan did come in and help steer the American ship on the right course, but we got lazy and assumed all was well too soon. The lesson we ALL need to learn right now is that for things to be right again, we must not only work at it now, but once we find our people to begin the process of righting the course, we need to be constantly vigilant and keep an eye on DC at all times from now on. Provided we hold free elections in 2010 - something I think many fear may not be the case - we can put in people who get it and who will work to undo the behemoth of Big Government. Our job is not done if we get these people in. Once in, our job will be to holdtheir feet to the fire and make sure they don't succumb to the temptations that political power offer.

The first thing that must be done is to set strict term limits on Congress. This should require a Constitutional amendment, as it did when the Presidential term limits were imposed. Two terms ought to be a good, consistent limit across the executive and legislative branch. Limiting someone's time in Washington effectively limits their ability to become corrupted.

Another area that needs to be addressed is the legislation itself. Congress is teeming with lawyers, who are so skilled at writing bills in legal jargon that many of them can't understand those bills they bother to read. Require that all legislation be written in plain English so that the people of this land can read the bills and underatand their meaning. Ambiguous language should be avoided whenever possible.

Furthermore, require that all legislation be read on the floor prior to any vote, prefereably prior to debate. Our Constitution was read piece by piece and debated on before passing. What is wrong with doing the same for any laws Congress wants to pass? Read the bills and discuss their Constitutionality, and vote based on that.

Bills like the 2000 page monstrosity should have died long before being voted on. How can anyone reasonably expect someone to vote for a bill so large with so little time to read it and examine it for legality? You can't; it's simply not possible.

Now, in this darkest hour, we must shine a light, find those who will blaze a new trail of common sense and responsibility in Washington, and find ourselves in a new dawn of American hope.

- F.D. for Two joe Schmoes

What is "virtue"?

As I said in the last post, America has strayed from its foundation, and everyone knows it. What not everyone knows is that our foundation is based on a solid morality and virtue, as the writings of the Founders will clearly attest. A lot of people on the Left want to equate this with some sort of theocracy or forced belief in religion. While our principles are based in Judeo-Christian morality, there's no compulsion to believe in any given doctrine. The virtue and morality the Founders spoke of is (or at least once was) held universally among all people.

Being a Catholic, I can go on the virtues listed in the Catechism. There are 7 virtues corresponding to the "Seven Deadly Sins", and one more which encompasses all others. They are, with their corresponding vices:

Purity -- Lust
Self-Control -- Gluttony
Charity -- Greed
Persistence -- Sloth
Patience -- Wrath
Kindness -- Envy
Humility -- Pride

Justice -- Corruption

The issue with America these days is a lack of the virtue and an overabundance of the vice.

Purity is mocked as "unrealistic" while lust is held up as desirable. One only need watch TV to see this.

Self-control is considered boring, gluttony is admired - look at the buffets, look at the portions served in restaurants.

Do I really need to explain Charity versus Greed? Washington calls its greed charity and our charity greed because we're not giving to them.

Persistence is punished now - our businesses are held in contempt while we are told it's "patriotic" to redistribute hard-earned wealth to people who have done nothing to earn it in some misguided attempt to "equalize" everything.

Patience is shunned, we're a society that wants, no, DEMANDS instant gratification. And if we don't get what we want, when we want it, we take it out on anyone near us. Road rage, air rage, fill-in-the-blank rage...America is very angry.

Kindness is seen as weakness most of the time. I can at least say that kindness is the most respected of the virtues, from what I've seen, but it is still overshadowed by its vice. Envy rules our petty minds - look at the "reality" shows which follow around the super-rich and spoiled elites. They are presented as having the life we should all want, and I've seen more than a few people overextend themselves to try to live like they do.

Humility does not exist in Washington, or in too many other places. People are quick to thump their chests and shout about all they do. No one can silently just do the right thing. People who do good are usually looking for a camera or attention out of the corner of their eye. In the work world it's even worse. No one can just do the job and be part of the team. Everyone is standing on a soapbox shouting about what they do, and often times denigrating the accomplishments of others. Pride is not only shown like this. In a lot of ways, people think they know better than the Creator, deciding who is and is not worthy of life.

Justice is the all-encompassing virtue - justice is when people are treated equally under the law. Remember, justice is not a respecter of people, it is a respecter of the law. What we have now is corruption in many forms. Groups are pushing to have their agenda favored over others, the Left loves to have its own special victim classes, who are perpetually oppressed by some Big Bad Oppressor. Our elected officials no longer go in with the intent to serve the people, they go in only to serve themselves and find ways to stay in office to amass power and money.

The way things need to be in order to work is inverted. I will try to cover each of these in more detail in the next posts.

F.D. for Two Joe Schmoes
Crossposted on Grizzly Groundswell