virtue

If Pericles’ funeral oration is a landmark of democratic virtue, the amoral facts of pure force become explicit in the “Melian dialogue” following the Athenian conquest of the neutral island of Melos in 415 B.C.:

Our “contemporary age,” he laments, “likes to signal its own virtue by calling out others without looking at the nuances of the case.”

“They have their flaws and their virtues; in fact, they have more flaws, especially Tulio, who is a villain, but he’s also the face of the show.”

To remove the often biased self-reporting that goes with virtues, our instrument measures only values, which are underlying motivations.

Somehow Mr. Carlson equates this defensible contention with the idea that “you should be killed by virtue of who your parents are.”