Hitler had skads of values. George Washington had virtues . Values-talk, alas, suits today's zeitgeist . It is the talk of a non-judgmental age. Ours is an age judgmental only about the sin of being judgmental.
Values are an equal-opportunity business.
They are mere choices . In contrast, virtues are habits, difficult to develop and therefore not accessible to all. Therefore, speaking of virtues rather than values is elitist, offensive to democracy's egalitarian, leveling ethos, which I say is precisely why talk of virtues should be revived and talk of values should be abandoned. Another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured America not long after Lafayette did, noted that although much is gained by replacing aristocratic with democratic institutions and suppositions, something valuable is often lost. What is lost is the ability to recognize and the hunger to honor hierarchies of achievement and character.