Virtues, Values, and Lessons From the Past

It was during the Victorian era that middle-class values became universal. Values like hard work, saving, and honesty were prevalent across classes. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Anyone old enough, or sufficiently familiar with the history of the English-speaking peoples, is likely to have formed an opinion about Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first woman prime minister.

Thatcher’s 1979 electoral victory ushered in a decade of renewed energy and economic recovery that spread throughout the North Atlantic Triangle. Soon after the “Iron Lady” took up residence in 10 Downing Street, Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, and Canadians elected Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The three leaders became loyal allies and good friends.

“Thatcherism” was based on three fundamentals: the free enterprise economic system, patriotic nationalism, and limiting the power of government over the lives of ordinary citizens.

In addition to her preference for private enterprise over socialism, love of country over globalism, and individual liberty over the authority of the state, Thatcher was also guided by what she called “Victorian values.” During her second election campaign, she asserted that she was grateful to her Victorian grandmother for teaching her the value of hard work, self-reliance, self-respect, cleanliness, neighbourliness, and pride in country.

Addressing the American Enterprise Institute some five years after Margaret Thatcher left office, U.S. historian Gertrude Himmelfarb expressed some insightful thoughts about the way the former prime minister had described her Victorian formation.

The distinguished professor emeritus from City University of New York contended that Thatcher’s grandmother would not have used the language of “values.” She said a middle-class Victorian woman would have been more likely to talk about “virtues.”

Himmelfarb went on to explain that it was Friedrich Nietzsche who first began to speak of “values” in the late 19th century. She contended that Nietzsche had started a permanent revolution against both classical and Judeo-Christian virtues. Indeed, Nietzsche and the intellectuals who followed inspired a revolt against the very idea of virtue.

Modern values, said Himmelfarb, are subjective and relative. She described them as “mere customs and conventions” that have a “purely instrumental, utilitarian purpose.” Values inform particular people and tend to be “race, class, and gender-specific.”

Victorian virtues, on the other hand, were practical and down to earth. They provided clear prescriptions for a way of life that supported the dignity of ordinary people and the general well-being of society. “One cannot say of virtues, as one can of values, that anyone’s virtues are as good as anyone else’s, or that everyone has a right to his own virtues,” said Himmelfarb.

Victorians believed there were norms against which human behaviour could be judged. Conduct that failed to meet recognized standards of decency was not just considered “inappropriate.” It was clearly viewed as wrong, immoral, or evil. The virtues that Margaret Thatcher described were firm and unwavering.

The iconic CUNY historian concluded that the shift from “virtues” to “values” had launched a revolution in thought that was both deceptive and troublesome. Today, a person’s values do not have to be virtuous. They are often self-serving beliefs, opinions, emotions, and preferences—anything that any individual or group claims to value for any reason at any time.

Consequences of the Values Revolution

Himmelfarb concluded that the post-Victorian “values revolution” had ushered in some unsettling social trends.

For example, by the end of the Victorian era, the illegitimacy ratio, measuring the annual number of births to unmarried women, was very low by present-day standards. In Anglo-American societies, it was around 3 percent in 1920. It went up to at least 5 percent by 1960 and rose to 10 times the 1920s rate by the last decade of the 20th century. Recent American estimates indicate that at least 40 percent of births now occur outside of marriage.

Himmelfarb also drew attention to a shocking rise in crime rates over the last century. In Victorian England, between 1857 and 1901, the rate of indictable offences declined by close to 50 percent. “The low crime rate,” she pointed out, “persisted until the mid 1920s. ... By 1991 the rate was ten times that of 1955 and forty times that of 1901.” In the United States more recent crime statistics have followed similar trends.

Himmelfarb noted that British sociologist Christie Davies had described a “U-curve model of deviance.” The curve he discovered showed a drop in crime, violence, illegitimacy, and alcoholism in the latter part of the 19th century. Levels of social pathology reached historic lows in the Victorian era but rose sharply over the next 100 years. Today, Davies’s “U curve” could more accurately be described as a “J-curve” because there appears to be no ceiling for rising levels of deviancy.

Himmelfarb also invoked the memory of the late Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In the latter part of the last century, the American sociologist and politician warned us against “defining deviancy down,” an accommodating response to bad behaviour that lowered the standards of acceptable conduct. As Himmelfarb notes, the same declining moral trends led the late Charles Krauthammer to propose a complementary paradigm that he called “Defining Deviancy Up.” Krauthammer pointed out that the more we normalize deviancy, the more deviant behaviour will appear to be normal.

Lessons From History

Post-1920s Anglo-American intellectuals adamantly refused to seek any kind of guidance from what they considered to be our deeply flawed past.

Some modern intellectuals appear to assume that a higher level of morality would be a natural by-product of scientific and technical advancements. Yet, scores of people continue to face serious problems in the form of disordered lives, uncertain employment, broken families, poor education, substance abuse, vagrancy, ill health, exposure to crime, and moral confusion.

Those concerned about lingering social pathologies are frequently advised to get over their Victorian hang-ups and become less “judgmental.” We are called upon to “unburden” ourselves from the past and “move on.” As Himmelfarb suggested, the study of our history is now treated like a visit to a foreign country.

But it doesn’t have to remain this way forever. In a recent book titled “In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present,” Canadian scholar Michael Bonner pointed out that “Every great revival of civilization has been inspired by the past.”

“Rebirth comes not as the result of random experiments that happen to turn out well, but the deliberate imitation of what has worked before,” wrote Bonner.

If and when serious cultural leaders succeed in liberating our formative institutions from the iron grip of the “values revolution,” closer attention to the virtues of Margaret Thatcher’s grandmother might be well worth considering.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.